Governance out of a Box – “High Level Seminar on Civil Registries in the Context of Conflict Prevention and Sustainable Peace & Development in West Africa” held in Accra from 13th to 14th September 2011
CMI’s Governance out of a Box project team organized a high level seminar themed ‘High Level Seminar on Civil Registries in the Context of Conflict Prevention and Sustainable Peace & Development in West Africa’ in Accra, Ghana from 13th to 14th September 2011.
As a corollary to the GooB project in Liberia on Civil Registration (which focuses currently on Birth Registration), the seminar brought together relevant influential policy level experts and technical experts from Liberia, Ivory Coast, Ghana, and Nigeria to share experiences of civil registration processes in the region, discuss issues of identity and citizen’s rights, and the benefits and risks of civil registry implementation and integration both domestically and regionally. The goal of the seminar was to begin discussions which would 1) aid the Liberian participants as they began implementation of a recently passed act to establish a National Registry Office, as well as 2) produce concrete civil registration/national identity policy recommendations for consideration at a regional (ECOWAS / Mano River Union) level.
Speakers at the event included Dr. M.J. Kuna from the Independent National Elections Commission (INEC) of Nigeria, Dr. Ibrahima Ba from the Institute of National Statistics in Ivory Coast, Dr. T. Edward Liberty from the Liberia Institute for Spatial and Geo Information Statistics (LISGIS), Dr. William Ahadzie from the National Identification Authority (NIA) in Ghana as well as Mr. Aliyu Aziz Abubakar from the National Identification Management Commission (NIMC) of Nigeria. Other organizations represented were the Liberian Ministry of Internal Affairs, the Liberian Ministry of Health, the National Information Technology Agency (NITA) of Ghana, the Electoral Commission (EC) of Ghana, the Organization for National Identity (ONI) in Ivory Coast, and the African Union (AU). Private sector technical experts present included Ghanaian software firm SOFTribe represented by its CEO Mr. Herman Chinery Hesse, as well as Ivorian firm SNEDAI, and Ghanaian firm Margins Group.
See the project page for more information on Governance out of a Box.
