Globally, rapid
urbanization, population growth and industrial expansion in the cities have
outpaced the capacity of the local authorities to manage waste effectively,
resulting in widespread adoption of unsanitary disposal patterns. Many cities
in Africa including Nigeria, are facing serious challenges in terms of urban
waste management. Several policies and programmes with huge budgetary
allocations have been experimented but with minimum success. The reason for the
dismal performance of most waste management programmes resulted from the
inability of the concerned agencies to bridge the missing link – the dynamic of
waste generation in terms of the spatial variation and the changes in the
direction of flow. Vital registration, the registration of births, deaths,
marriages and migration has a long history, however, its application has not
been fully utilized. If vital registration is reasonably accurate, it is
possible to obtain a picture of the changes in the structure of the population
which can provide a platform for forecasting of sources and potential volume of
urban waste. This is achievable through data gathering and monitoring of urban
population drift and household dynamics. This paper provides a broad insight
into how data gathering through vital registration can improve urban waste
management efforts in Africa especially in Nigeria where waste management is
essentially handled by government agencies.
Keywords: Vital registration, Waste management, Urbanization, Sustainability, Nigeria.
