Namibia just alunched a new e-death program. Prime Minister Saara Kuugongelwa-Amadhila has officially launched the system, a new component of the civil registration and identity management system in Namibia.
The e-Death Notification System extends the death registration process by allowing the Ministry of Health and Social Services and mortuaries that serve as the first official point of contact with the deceased to electronically verify the identity of the deceased, classify the causes-of-death, and to electronically notify the Ministry of Home Affairs and Immigration about the death that has occurred. The integration of the e-Death Notification with the e-National Population Registration System significantly reduces the process of obtaining a death certificate by the family and allows for production of comprehensive vital and mortality statistics. This is apparently is big step for the vision that Namibia has for 2019/2020. To date, government have a fully integrated digital civil registration and identification system that makes provision for births, marriages, IDs, and death events of citizens, resulting in an improved management of civil registration and service delivery to citizens. This system is very unique as it’s the first of it’s kind and it aslo happens to be home made.
When I read this article I found this all to be very odd. It would seem to be that this is a very expensive program to have and run. With the country being so poor this is probably not the best time to be worried about things such as marriage. They should be more concerned with the state of starvation within the country or the lack of water as well. The average life expectancy in Namibia is only 62 years old and 18 percent of children are malnourished. It will take a very long time for this system to reach the people of Namibia considering how many people are unregistered. This would be a good step for the country if they had other issues sorted out first.