Why Kenyans don’t get birth certificates

By Lillian Aluanga

For weeks now, parents seeking birth certificates to have their children registered for national examinations have swamped Sheria House.

Among them is Tabitha Wambua, a Kaloleni resident who has been leaving home at 5.30am to join queues outside the Registration of Births and Deaths offices in Nairobi.

"My daughter is supposed to sit the national primary exam this year. I wouldn’t want her to be locked out because of a certificate," she says.

Parents queue outside Sheria House to get birth certificates for their children. This followed a directive by the Kenya National Examination Council that students would not be registered without the documents. Photo: File/Standard

Before a directive was issued by the Kenya National Examinations Council to have candidates present birth certificates before registration, Wambua never thought much of it.

"I saw no need to get one because there was never a situation where I was forced to present it," she says.

Although a birth certificate is the official acknowledgement of a child’s existence by the State, and a precursor to accessing other rights, many Kenyans are yet to get the documents. In Kilifi District, for instance, a survey done in 2005 showed that majority of its residents have no birth papers. By 2004, it was estimated that only 40 per cent of Kenyan children were registered at birth. While figures from the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics show 811,000 births recorded in 2008, it remains difficult to tell how many of these births have the requisite papers.

So, just why won’t Kenyans get birth papers?

"I have no plans to leave the country so why do I need the certificate?" asks Boniface Mutiso, a newspaper vendor on Parliament Road.

At 33 years, Mutiso sees little need for getting a birth certificate. None of his siblings has the document, either. All they have relied on to estimate their ages are dates given by their parents.

"Getting a birth certificate at the time would have meant travelling from my village in Mbooni, to the district headquarters in Makueni," says Mutiso. Getting to Makueni would cost him no less than Sh250, and there was no guarantee that the process would be finalised in a day.

But the problems of birth registration aren’t unique to Kenya. South Asia and Africa are estimated to form the bulk of the more than 45 million unregistered children in the world. In other countries like the Dominican Republic and Thailand, research by Plan International shows birth certificates being used as a political tool to deny thousands citizenship.

"African countries have not told people why it is important to have a birth certificate," says University of Nairobi’s Dr Alfred Otieno.

Otieno, a lecturer at the Population Studies and Research Institute, says a birth certificate, as opposed to a death certificate, has no tangible benefits (such as inheritance of wealth), thus making fewer people voluntarily seek it.

A conference of Eastern and Southern African States on Universal Birth Registration in 2005 identified government commitment and political will as crucial in facilitating birth registration systems. Besides decentralisation, computerisation of birth registration systems and allocation of resources at the national level are considered key in having higher births registered.

"The initial birth registration process should be made available in all private and public hospitals," says Otieno, who also argues that proper birth registration would negate the need to have a national census, saving Treasury millions of shillings.

While recent events have seen Mutiso vow to get certificates for his two children, his reasons for not having them registered at birth are simple. Both children were born in a ‘clinic’ within the Mukuru slum.

"There were no papers for registration," Mutiso says.

Across other African countries, factors such as negative cultural beliefs, mobility and nomadic lifestyles, difficult terrain, inadequate resources and challenges in gathering and managing information have further slowed birth registrations.

"Birth certificates are a foreign concept to Africa, where celebrations and rituals were normally what would mark the birth of a child," says Anthropology lecturer Dr Olungah Owuor.

According to the University of Nairobi lecturer, part of the problem stems from the fact that no need has been created for having a birth certificate.

"The public must first be socialised to understand the importance of having the document before the Government issues ultimatums that would force people to get the certificate just for the sake of it," says Owuor.

It is perhaps the belief that one can still get by without a birth certificate that has fuelled the reluctance among many to get it.

Registration process

"I have always had casual jobs where it is not necessary to present a birth certificate to get hired," says Wambua.

Until the directive was issued last month, getting a birth certificate was nowhere in Wambua’s priorities.

She recalls getting her daughter, now 14 years, at the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, and being asked to return two weeks later to start the registration process. But she never did.

"There was always too much to do around the house, and since there was no urgency in getting the certificate, I never went back to the hospital," she says.

Then there are others like Rachael Nzioka, who delivered at home. "I never saw the need to get a certificate and my child has never been denied any service because of it," she says.

Nzioki, who has also been camping at Sheria House, now regrets not taking the document earlier.

Despite the challenges faced by African countries in registering births, there are those who have a different story to tell.

In Botswana, linkages between systems has seen more than 50 per cent of the population registered. The country’s birth registration system is linked to the national identification system, which means that the registration number issued at birth, also becomes ones national ID number for life. This same number is reflected in other services such as voter registration, government payrolls, pension, property ownership and vehicle registration. In Egypt, birth registration is entrenched in law with certain services such as immunisation offered at subsidised rates for children who are registered.

In Zimbabwe, the Government makes allocation of resources to the Universal Birth Registration programme, while all orphans and abandoned children are registered under the Children’s Protection and Adoption Act.

"It is difficult to measure achievement and efficiency in education where proper birth records are lacking. How do we, for instance, determine those who are under or over age?" poses African Population Health and Research Centre’s Charles Epari.

Epari, an education assistant at APHRC, says the benefits of birth registration are now global, and that the Government should embark on an aggressive drive, similar to the polio and measles campaigns, to have all births registered.