Civil registration and vital statistics systems (CRVS) remain some of the weakest points in African national statistical systems. According to UNICEF, 41% of sub-Saharan African children under five years of age have never been registered. “The demand for registration services remains weak because many people do not have adequate awareness about the importance of civil registration for them and their families,” explains Camilla Rocca in a blog post published by the Mo Ibrahim Foundation. Read on

Official Development Assistance for urban development is mostly channelled to big cities, benefitting some 63 million people or37% of the region’s total urban population of 171 million people. About 45% of urban development projects were implemented in agglomerations with more than 300 000 inhabitants. However, nearly half of West Africa’s urban dwellers live in small and medium-size cities. Considering West Africa’s rapidly growing small and mid-sized cities, development partners need to better target and scale up their support. Read on

The theme of the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF 2019), which brought together some 2 400 key stakeholders on 3-6 September in Accra, focused on using digital information and tools to support sustainable food systems in Africa. With the facilitation of USAID, the SWAC Secretariat presented the Africapolis database and key findings from its work on urbanisation. Read on

Laurent Bossard, Director of the SWAC Secretariat, and the economist Jean-Marie Cour were invited to the programme “Eco d’ici Eco d’ailleurs” on RFI, a French public radio channel, where they discussed the issue of rural migration in Africa. They lamented the often-false perception of this phenomenon, which shows how difficult it is for observers and development actors to change the paradigm when it comes to how the continent’s transformations are analysed. Read on