April 2025, World: UNICEF’s new statistical compendium on the situation of children in Africa

Focused on offering robust, high-quality data on the situation of the nearly one billion children on the African continent, UNICEF has recently launched its 2025 statistical compendium jointly with the African Union Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). The compendium ‘features timely, actionable data on key indicators’, including on birth registration, a vital element of children’s right to identity and an entry point for the enjoyment of other fundamental children’s rights, such as access to education, health services and social security.

Africa has been at the heart of CHIP’s recent activities and projects aimed at promoting children’s identity rights. Indeed, in cooperation with UNICEF’s Regional Office for Western and Central Africa as well as UNICEF’s country offices in Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Niger, Nigeria and Senegal, and given the high rates of under-registration in many of the Continent’s countries, CHIP is supporting the implementation of mechanisms aimed at catching up on birth registration in schools. Thus, CHIP welcomes this resource, which contributes to raising awareness about the region’s birth registration rates and the situation of children across the Continent.

See: United Nations Children’s Fund, The State of African Children 2025 Statistical Compendium, UNICEF, African Union and UNECA, 2025, https://data.unicef.org/resources/soac-2025/; Child Identity Protection, Technical support continues to accelerate birth registration, https://www.child-identity.org/technical-support-continues-to-accelerate-birth-registration/.