The well-known digital lifestyle company Tigo, is supporting the Tanzanian government under-five government project through the use of a mobile application that will process birth certificates faster for children under the age of five. The registration process is expected to take place in Iringa and Njombe where it is meant to help more than 200,000 children under the age of five. The fact that birth certificate registration was taking too long in some areas, some parents would simply call it quits. With this realization, the program is bringing registration closer to these communities by establishing registration points at existing health facilities and at the community health office. Tigo will donate phones to this program so that research assistants will be well equipped. There will be more than 700 registration points and about 1,500 research assistants dedicated to the project.
In addition to this project, Tigo has partnered with Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA) and UNICEF scaling up this project in Njombe and Iringa regions following success registered in Mbeya and Mwanza regions where more than 400,000 under -five children have been registered and provided with birth certificate from 2013 to date. It seems that after years of stagnation, Tanzania can finally mark a great significant shift in accelerating birth certificates, which will ensure that every child has an identity. After the project was launched, Tigo’s general manager stated said “Tigo is proud to be the sole telecommunication company partnering with RITA, UNICEF and other stakeholders in order to make sure that every child birth in Tanzania does not go unaccounted for because identity is a basic right for every child.”
Without an identity a person is basically been denied his/her rights. With this new project children in Tanzania are on the path to getting their basic rights. The government will also be able to develop a legislative framework that will be necessary in order to position it’s 23 million children under the age of 18 at the top of development agenda. So far the initiative has covered 2 Regions – Mbeya and Mwanza, and will cover an additional 10 Regions including Iringa and Njombe aiming to facilitate the establishment of a sustainable model of birth registration targeting 3.5 million girls and boys under the age of five. According to the Tanzania Demographic Health Survey (DHS) 2010, only 16% of children under the age of five have been registered by civil authorities, with the worst challenge being in the rural areas.