According to the National Civil Status Office (Bunec), Cameroon is pursuing the ambition of digitizing all civil status centers open in the national triangle.
Except that, for the moment, this project only consists of 42 digitized civil status centers out of the 432 identified. These centers where registration of new births is now done digitally are mainly found in the cities of Yaoundé and Douala, the two major metropolises of the country. Bunec also ensures that certain centers in the Far North region have also moved from manual recording to digital recording. It is to complete this project that Bunec has chosen to study South Korean schools. South Korea is presented as a benchmark in the digitalization of civil status in the world. Yaoundé also turned to the World Bank to raise enough funds with the aim of digitizing all the civil registration centers in the country. And at the local level, Bunec continues to train civil status officers to facilitate the switch to digitalization. Nearly 12,000 civil status officers and secretaries have already been trained.
The Cameroonian authorities do not hide the fact that digitalization is not a simple political fad. Because it will make it possible to put an end to the phenomenon of invisible children. These are children who do not have a birth certificate. There will be nearly 1.6 million invisible children in school in 2024 in Cameroon. A situation which calls into question the government. The Ministry of Decentralization and Local Development (Minddevel) has therefore launched a massive recruitment project. The Ministry of Basic Education (Minedub) has committed to registering 80,000 children.
