DAKAR: It was only when 12-year-old Senegalese schoolboy Lassou Samb was preparing for his final exams that the lack of any legal documentation finally caught up with him.
Like many young people in the West African country, Samb was never registered at birth, an oversight with potentially profound consequences for his education.
Hundreds of thousands of Senegalese pupils will take their end-of-school exams until Wednesday.
However, Samb almost failed the test required to move up to the next year because he lacked the required birth certificate.
Every year, the trial period draws attention to a major failure in birth registration, not just in Senegal but across Africa.
Of the more than 300,000 pupils registered for primary school exams, almost 70,000 did not have proof of personal status, the examination department said.
This issue has potentially serious implications, from the protection of rights, access to public services and government policy planning.
One of six children born in a village in central Senegal, Samb was the only one in his family not registered.
“Our (school) principal often calls me to the office to remind me that I haven’t brought my birth certificate yet, but I don’t know what to tell him,” he said.
Samb “was born with a broken arm at a time when things were hard for us,” said his father Malick, a factory worker.
“Then the priority was to treat him.”
Like previous administrations, Senegal’s new government this year ignored the rule requiring birth certificates for exams and allowed children to take them without one.
“It is out of the question to sacrifice these children twice,” said Moussa Bala Fofana, minister for local and regional authorities.
“Firstly by not registering them at birth and secondly by preventing them from taking exams because they don’t have papers, even though they have nothing to do with it,” he said.
While 98 percent of births are registered in Europe, in Africa it is only 44 percent, according to a 2024 WHO report.
More than half of the world’s unregistered children live in Africa, a total of about 91 million, the UN children’s agency UNICEF said in 2022.
Birth registration is a critical first step in accessing health care, education and justice, and is also an essential tool for government public health and development planning.
But long distances to registry offices, lack of knowledge, local customs and, in some countries, discriminatory practices and fees can prevent parents from registering a birth, UNICEF said.
Some parents neglect or ignore the importance of birth certificates, even though they have up to a year to register their child for free, said Aliou Ousmane Sall, director of Senegal’s national personal status agency.
After this deadline, registration must be approved by the court and parents must pay a fee of 4,000 CFA francs ($7).
Obtaining a birth certificate can take several years due to difficult access to the necessary services, outdated equipment and poorly trained officials.
“For most of our African countries, we had to make the transition from a colonial state to a post-colonial state,” said Oumar Ba, president of the country’s mayors’ association.
“As a result, a number of measures were not taken on time. Our states inherited a registry that was not well structured,” he added.
Deficiencies lead to fraud, with concerns about ID number trading rife in Senegal.
Seydina Aidara, 23, said he was about to take his final high school exams when he discovered his civil registration number had been stolen, preventing him from taking the test.
For Lassou Samba, the birth certificate would later allow him to obtain an ID card, passport or driver’s license.
But his father said that despite his efforts, he was unable to complete the registration process.
The government has launched a plan to modernize and digitize the civil registry in an effort to improve access and minimize fraud.
Nineteen million records have already been digitized, said Sall of the national personal status agency. “The problems with this program will be solved soon,” he said.
