Kenya misses birth registration goal by over 300,000
Parents and students flock Maua Civil Registrar's office for birth certificates. Kenya is off the track to meet the United Nation target of 90 per cent completeness of birth registration, with the national rate falling to 77.1 per cent by 2023, indicating ongoing challenges in achieving universal registration coverage.
What you need to know:
- According to the World Health Organization, information on births and deaths by location, age, sex and cause is the cornerstone of public health and social development planning.
Kenya missed its national birth registration target for 2023 by 354,376, highlighting critical challenges within the country's civil registration and vital statistics systems.
Birth registration is the official process by which the civil registrar records the occurrence and characteristics of a birth, as required by national law. It establishes a person's existence under the law and provides legal proof of identity.
According to the Kenya Vital Statistics Report 2023 published by the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS), the government aimed to register at least 1.55 million births by the end of 2023, but only managed to register about 1.19 million, a shortfall of about 23.22 per cent.
The report also revealed that Kenya is off the track to meet the United Nation (UN) target of 90 per cent completeness of birth registration, with the national rate falling to 77.1 per cent by 2023, indicating ongoing challenges in achieving universal registration coverage.
Vital statistics
The UN aims to achieve at least 90 per cent birth registration completeness in all countries, which requires support to build statistical capacity for robust national civil registration systems. Such systems are essential for the production of vital statistics, including birth registration data, which underpin sustainable human and economic development.
According to the World Health Organization, information on births and deaths by location, age, sex and cause is the cornerstone of public health and social development planning.
The agency notes that birth registration provides a basis for social inclusion and individual legal identity, which is a human right. Registering births, deaths and causes of death allows countries to identify their most pressing health and social issues such as fertility rates or resolution of criminal cases.
The national birth registration completeness rate has fluctuated over the past five years, with a clear downward trend. In 2019, Kenya was close to meeting the UN target with a rate of 89.3 per cent. However, disruptions caused by the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020 led to a sharp decline to 79.9 per cent. There was a brief recovery to 83.1 per cent in 2021, but the following years saw a further decline to 80.6 per cent in 2022 and then to 77.1 per cent in 2023, according to the Kenya Vital Statistics Report.
"Kenya has made considerable efforts to improve birth registration coverage through various strategies. Despite these efforts, the national birth registration coverage declined from 83.1 per cent in 2021 and 80.6 percent in 2022 to 77.1 per cent in 2023," the report stated.
On the county-level, data for 2023 show a mixed picture, with some counties exceeding the UN target and many others falling below the national average. Twelve counties achieved 90 per cent or more birth registration completeness, including Nairobi City (131.6 per cent), Kericho (127.5 per cent), Nyamira (123.2 per cent), Kisii (101.7 per cent), Kiambu (100.4 per cent) and Uasin Gishu (100.2 per cent).
Other counties with high registration rates include Mombasa (96.3 per cent), Kilifi (95.9 per cent), Kisumu (93.9 per cent), Tharaka Nithi (93.7 per cent), Taita Taveta (92.5 per cent) and Siaya (90.3 per cent). These high rates may be partly due to late registrations from previous years.
Conversely, nine counties in the drylands reported the lowest completeness of birth registration: Wajir (12.2 per cent), Mandera (13.9 per cent), Samburu (34.3 per cent), Turkana (35.8 per cent), Tana River (44.3 per cent), Marsabit (46.8 per cent), Garissa (52.5 per cent), Narok (52.8 per cent) and Isiolo (56.5 per cent). These regions face systemic challenges, including limited infrastructure, cultural practices that downplay birth registration, and logistical difficulties in accessing remote areas.
“Kenya faces significant obstacles in achieving universal birth registration. Many underserved counties lack the necessary systems and resources to facilitate timely birth registration. In addition, traditional practices and limited awareness in some communities reduce the importance attached to registration. Financial and human resource constraints have also affected the capacity of civil registration services,” the report said.
To reverse the declining trend and work towards the UN target, the report suggests urgent interventions including investing in technology and extending digital registration systems to rural and marginalised areas to improve access; implementing targeted outreach programmes to educate communities about the importance of birth registration; streamlining registration processes to address late registrations; and strengthening coordination between national and district governments, NGOs and community organisations to effectively address systemic challenges.
