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DAKAR – When 12-year-old Senegalese schoolboy Lassou Samb prepared to take his final exams, he realized he lacked any legal documents.
Like many young people in this West African country, Sambu was never registered at birth, an oversight that could have far-reaching consequences for his education.
Hundreds of thousands of Senegalese primary school students will take exams until Wednesday, marking the end of their school year.
But Sambu almost didn’t take the exams needed to advance to the next grade because he didn’t have the required birth certificate.
Major failures in birth registration come to the fore during each year’s exam period, not just in Senegal but across Africa.
The examination department said that out of the more than 300,000 students who registered for primary school final exams, nearly 70,000 did not have identity documents.
This problem can have serious consequences, affecting all aspects of rights protection, access to public services and government policy planning.
Sambou was born in a village in central Senegal, one of six children and the only one in the family that was not registered.
“Our (school) principal often called me to his office to remind me that I had not brought my birth certificate, but I didn’t know what to tell him,” he said.
Sambu’s father Malik, a factory worker, said Sambu was “born with a broken hand and our life was very difficult at that time.”
“The priority is to treat him.”
Like previous governments, Senegal’s new government this year ignored the exam’s requirement for birth certificates and allowed children to take the exam without one.
Unregistered children
“There is absolutely no chance that these children will be sacrificed again,” said Moussa Bala Fofana, the minister for local and regional authorities.
“First, they are not declared when they are born, and secondly, because they have no documents, they are not allowed to take the exams even though it is none of their business,” he said.
According to a 2024 report by the World Health Organization, while 98% of births are registered in Europe, the birth registration rate in Africa is only 44%.
UNICEF said in 2022 that more than half of the world’s unregistered children live in Africa, totaling about 91 million.
Birth registration is a critical first step in accessing healthcare, education and justice, and is an important tool for governments in planning public health and development.
But UNICEF says parents are unable to register births due to long distances to registration offices, lack of knowledge, local customs and, in some countries, discriminatory practices and costs.
Aliou Ousmane Sall, director of Senegal’s national civil identity agency, said that despite having up to a year to register their children for free, some parents still ignore or disregard the importance of birth certificates.
After this deadline, the court must approve the registration and the parents must pay a fee of 4,000 CFA francs ($7).
Fraud
Obtaining a birth certificate can take years due to limited access to necessary services, outdated equipment and inadequate training of officials.
“For most of us in Africa, we have to transition from a colonial state to a post-colonial state,” said Omar Ba, president of the country’s association of mayors.
“As a result, many measures were not implemented in a timely manner. Our states inherited a poorly structured civil registration system,” he added.
These shortcomings can easily lead to fraud, and there are widespread concerns in Senegal about the trafficking of ID numbers.
Seydina Aidara, 23, said he was about to take his high school final exams when he discovered his civil registration number had been stolen, preventing him from taking the exams.
For Rasu Sambu, a birth certificate would allow him to get an ID card, passport or driver’s license later.
But his father said that despite his efforts, he was unable to complete the registration process.
The government has launched a program to modernize and digitize civil registration to improve the registration process and minimize fraud.
Salle of the National Civil Status Agency said 19 million records have been digitized.
“With this plan, these problems will be solved soon,” he said.
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