Up until now, the number of birth registrations, especially in rural areas of Africa, remains low with only fifty percent of children being registered on average. Children born in Kenya must be registered within 90 days of their birth. If they are not citizens face costly, lengthy processes to register their children which, if not done, can prevent them from accessing vital state resources like education, healthcare and ultimately, productive employment.
At Connected Kenya, the leading East African public services and private sector ICT convention, SAP Africa announced the launch of a new mobile application prototype that significantly simplifies the birth registration process in an easy, reliable fashion.
Professor Jan Eloff, Research Expert and Elmarie Venter, Senior Researcher, SAP Innovation Centre in Pretoria, South Africa, said: “SAP’s challenge was to develop a simple mobile birth registration application prototype to enable a responsible individual, with the help of a mobile phone, to register the birth of any child within 90 days. We hope to secure the buy-in of the Kenyan government and then ultimately roll this out elsewhere in Africa in the future.”
When a baby is born, an Acknowledgement of Birth Notification (ABN) is sent to the registrar of vital events in Kenya by a birth attendant working at a health institution; Sometimes the government administration can also send the notification if the birth occurred at home.
With SAP Africa’s Rural Births Registration app, citizens would be able to register newborn babies in a simple, timely and reliable way at The Kenyan Civil Registration Department, responsible for the registration of births and deaths in Kenya. This app is available on a smart phone integrated with SAP Cloud-based technology. This could easily be accessed by any health care worker or representative from government to register babies born in each district.
“Birth registration is a fundamental right for all children and as such it is contained in the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child; thus placing an obligation on states to ensure this right. SAP’s Rural Births Registration application seeks to support these rights and improve the lives on citizens as a result,” commented Eloff.
Speakers at the Connected Kenya event, where the SAP Africa prototype was being demonstrated, include Andrew Waititu, SAP’s East Africa MD, said: “Through innovative technologies SAP Africa is committed to enabling both central government and the counties to prosper and improve the lives of all citizens,” commented Waititu.
