South Africa to digitize 350 million civic paper records for safe keeping

South Africa will digitize 350 million civic paper records relating to birth, marriages, deaths, and amendments so that they could be stored safely.

Minister of Home Affairs Aaron Motsoaledi who made the announcement Thursday at a press briefing said the project will run over a three-year period starting in November 2022.

"The department has more than 350 million civic paper records relating to birth, marriages, deaths and amendments. The category of records dates back to 1895 which necessitated care and reliable systems that will bear tolerance for digitization purposes. It must be noted that the department is increasingly using technology to improve the way it renders services to the people and to improve the security of our documents," said Motsoaledi.

He said they would recruit 10,000 unemployed graduates who have qualifications in information technology, information and records management to assist in digitizing their system, explaining that it used to take a long time to process unabridged birth and marriage certificates and other documents because they had to manually search through 350 million documents.

"Once the records are digitized, home affairs officials will have access to them at a click of a button and would be able to finalize the applications instantly. This will obviate people having to come to the office on multiple occasions," he said, as reported by Xinhua News Agency, a partner of TV BRICS.

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