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Tanzania unlikely to achieve full birth registration until 2051, says CAG
What you need to know:
- The report attributed the slow pace of registration to several key factors, including demand-driven applications, rather than a proactive or automated system, manual data entry processes, which slow down operations.
Dar es Salaam. Tanzania faces a prolonged delay in achieving universal birth registration, with the Controller and Auditor General (CAG) warning that full coverage on the Mainland may not be realized until 2051, unless urgent interventions are implemented.
In the Annual General Report on Performance Audit released on April 16, 2025, the CAG revealed that as of December 2024, only 29 percent of the population in Mainland Tanzania had been registered and issued with birth certificates a figure that presents significant challenges to national planning and access to essential services.
The audit, which assessed the performance of the Registration, Insolvency and Trusteeship Agency (RITA), highlighted critical inefficiencies in the civil registration process, including delays in certificate issuance and a heavy backlog of unprocessed records.
“Despite the implementation of the Civil Registration System (CRS) in 2017 and earlier initiatives such as U5BRI, RITA has not been able to meet the five-day target for issuing birth and death certificates,” the report stated.
The report attributed the slow pace of registration to several key factors, including demand-driven applications, rather than a proactive or automated system, manual data entry processes, which slow down operations.
As a result there is a backlog of 13.7 million unregistered records, including over 12 million births and approximately 1.6 million deaths.
These inefficiencies, the CAG warned, are not only limiting citizens’ access to services such as National IDs, education, and health, but are also hindering the country's progress toward meeting the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)—particularly those related to legal identity and vital statistics.
While the audit acknowledged efforts by RITA to improve the system, including the development of a Death Notification Module to enhance real-time registration of deaths, the challenges remain substantial.
“The delays are affecting demographic tracking and data accuracy, which are essential for effective public policy, social services, and emergency response,” the report noted.
The CAG says the current system relies on a hybrid approach records are manually filled and later uploaded to the central system. This creates bottlenecks and increases the risk of data errors, further complicating the process of achieving universal registration.
Recommendations
In response to these challenges, the CAG has issued a series of recommendations to accelerate progress.
These include conducting a comprehensive baseline survey to assess the actual workload and scope of unregistered populations, rolling out targeted public awareness campaigns to increase registration demand and knowledge
The CAG also recommend the digitizing all remaining manual records for better accuracy and accessibility, plus integrating the Civil Registration System (CRS) with other government databases to streamline access and cross-verification of vital statistics
“RITA needs to adopt a more proactive and data-driven approach if the country is to achieve universal civil registration and meet national and global development targets,” the report concluded.
