More than 270,000 newborns have been registered through Kenya’s electronic birth notification system, as the government moves to link hospitals directly with civil registration services and assign children lifelong unique personal identifiers.
The digital system allows hospitals to capture details of newborns and their parents electronically and transmit the information to the Civil Registration Services (CRS), reducing reliance on paper-based birth notifications.
Principal Secretary for Immigration and Citizen Services Belio Kipsang said the system had been developed to enable birth registration at the hospital level and automatically generate a Unique Personal Identifier (UPI), also known as the Maisha Namba.
Under the system, the UPI is assigned at birth and is intended to remain with an individual throughout their lifetime. The Government says the identifier will eventually connect a person’s records across different stages of life, including national identification and access to public services.
The Directorate of Civil Registration Services says the new digital birth and death registration system generates the UPI during birth registration and is intended to improve the efficiency, security and convenience of identity management.
Kipsang said the electronic notification system would address longstanding challenges associated with paper records, including discrepancies in personal information and cases where people obtain multiple or altered birth certificates.
“When a child is born in a hospital, notification will now be done electronically at the hospital level. That notification will be relayed directly to Civil Registration Services and linked to the Unique Personal Identifier generator, after which the child will immediately be issued with a Maisha Namba,” Kipsang said in May 2026.
The government has been rolling out the system in phases, with hospitals being onboarded and trained to use the electronic platform. Civil Registration Services said in April that Nairobi Hospital had begun implementing the e-notification platform, with plans for a wider national rollout.
The reform is part of Kenya’s broader shift towards a lifecycle-based digital identity system. Government documents say the UPI project is intended to address fragmentation in the country’s identification system, where birth certificates, national identity cards and passports have traditionally been associated with separate identifiers.
The Treasury has listed the UPI as a major government project being implemented by Civil Registration Services under the State Department for Immigration and Citizen Services. The project has an estimated cost of Ksh12 billion and is scheduled to run from July 2023 to June 2029.
The CRS says birth registration is compulsory under the Births and Deaths Registration Act and applies to births occurring in Kenya regardless of nationality.
The government has also been pursuing integration of civil registration and hospital management systems so that birth details can be captured at health facilities, with parents subsequently able to obtain birth certificates using the child’s UPI.
The reforms are intended to create a single, continuous identity record from birth, with the UPI eventually supporting identification and service delivery throughout an individual’s life.
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