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Birth Registration And Educational Access In Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case For An Explanatory Spatial Research Design, Thomas Edward Griffin

Graduate College Dissertations and Theses

In 2019, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated the global number of children under the age of 5 without birth registrations at 166 million, with the largest share being present in Sub-Saharan Africa. As the author witnessed firsthand while working in Cameroon, the lack of birth registration documentation (i.e. birth certificates) precluded students from progressing from primary to secondary education. Struck by this example of social exclusion, the purpose of this study was to examine the extent to which birth registration acted as a barrier to educational access in primary and secondary education systems elsewhere across Sub-Saharan Africa. An …