National Civil Registration Authority

The Act further empowers NCRA to register all civil status events occurring in Sierra Leone including registering births, adoptions, marriages, divorce and deaths among others throughout Sierra Leone. With the advent of this Act and by implication, various other Registration related activities can no longer be performed by the traditional institutions for example registration of births and deaths by the National office for Births and Deaths, registration of marriages and divorces by the Office of the Administrator and Registrar General, etc. but will instead be undertaken by the NCRA as stipulated in the Act. With a mandate to register citizens and non-citizens resident in Sierra Leone, the NCRA and the National Electoral Commission (NEC) jointly conducted voter and civil registration nationwide to serve as a base for the establishment of Sierra Leone's National Civil Register and the setting up of permanent registration centers for the continuous registration of vital events in Sierra Leone. NCRA and NEC embarked on a two-phased registration system. A total of 3,300 registration centres were established during the two-phased registration model. During the first phase led by NEC from 20th March to 30th April 2017, the registration targeted only Sierra Leonean citizens born on or before 7th March 2000 and were able to capture 3,128,967 registrants from the total population of 7,075,641 (SSL, 2015). During the NCRA led registration (Mass Civil Registration) phase which commenced on 15th May 2017 and ended on 18th June 2017, the registration focused on registering every resident in Sierra Leone except for those that registered during the NEC led registration phase. 2,085,314 people were registered during the mass civil registration exercise. Thus 5.2 million people were registered including duplicates as against the estimated Statistics Sierra Leone (SSL) 7 million population is with the NCRA awaiting exhibition. The enactment of the National Civil Registration Act, 2016 and the subsequent appointment of the ...