Kenyan birth registration system wins gold for service design at the Estonian Design Awards

In Kenya, a country of nearly 58 million people, around one in five births went unregistered each year. Obtaining a birth certificate was a complicated and time-consuming process, requiring people to travel hundreds of kilometres to submit information on paper forms. A shortage of forms or manual data entry errors could delay registration, and simply obtaining a birth certificate could take months. 

The new e-service developed in cooperation with ESTDEV, Estonian private sector and Kenyan partners enables new parents to register their child’s birth at the hospital for the first time. Data entered while still in the hospital goes directly to the population registry, reducing the time required to obtain a birth certificate from months to days. 

The service has now been rolled out to 372 healthcare facilities, with nearly 300,000 births registered through the system. 

ESTDEV funded the development of this e-service as part of the European Union's initiative for human-centric digitalisation. Trinidad Wiseman handled the design and analysis, while ADM Interactive completed the development work in collaboration with Kenya's Civil Registration Services. The updated solution was integrated with the country's existing systems. 

The joint project was recognised at this year’s Estonian Design Awards, where it received the Gold award for Best Service Design Project. 

Estonia’s digital expertise helps Kenya tackle longstanding challenges 

Birth certificate is more than a document; it is the key to education, health care and other essential government services. 

It was the first time in Kenya when public service designers went to the end customer to see how they used the service. “When talking about human-centric design, our take is that humans live everywhere. It’s always observations and interviews first to understand the topic and understand the users. We actually go and talk to people and listen to what they have to say,” said Helen Susan Selirand, Strategic Design lead at Trinidad Wiseman. 

In addition, a handbook for developing citizen-centred digital services was created. 

After the creation of initial prototypes by Trinidad Wiseman, Estonian digital solutions agency ADM Interactive collaborated with Kenya’s Civil Registration Services to develop a solution that integrated with the country’s legacy systems. Rather than replacing infrastructure, experts from ADM and Kenyan teams worked together to modernise it. 

The ADM and Kenyan teams did not replace the entire infrastructure but worked together to modernise it. ADM CEO Riho Pihelpuu emphasised that the approach was not simply about creating and implementing a single model; rather, it was a partnership focused on knowledge transfer and building a sustainable system. 

“This birth registration system has provided the foundational layer for every Kenyan’s digital life. It is potentially one of the most impactful Digital Public Infrastructure projects in Kenya. The benefits of the system extend far beyond making birth registration faster, simpler and more accessible. It also helps citizens access government, healthcare, education, financial and other essential services more easily,” said Christopher Waweru, ESTDEV’s project manager for e-Governance in Kenya. 

This e-service was developed within the framework of the Team Europe Initiative on human-centric digitalisation in Kenya, which aims to support the country's digitalisation and the creation of an open, inclusive digital society. ESTDEV implemented the project activities, which were funded by Germany, Estonia and the European Union. 

Photo: Silver Gutmann