The registration of births and deaths across 47 countries in Africa has either collapsed or become weaker in the advent of the pandemic, and it will take years for governments to come up with real data needed for future planning.
According to research by the UN agency, Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), non-digitised Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CRVS) do not have fully functional systems and have failed to capture real-time mortality, which is crucial for monitoring levels and trends during pandemics.
