My daughter spent 2 years on the Mercy Ship on the West coast of Africa. Her shipmates came from all over the world, and from all over the continent of Africa.
She is now engaged to a man from Benin, West Africa. About age 11 he was orphaned, then adopted. To enroll him in school, they had to get him a birth certificate. At the time he was too old to enroll in elementary school, so they set his birth date 5 years earlier than it really was so he could get his education. That meant that although his true age was 11, his birth certificate read that he was 6. It’s just how they do things there.
I have been told that in many of the poorest countries of Africa, regulations are a formality, and they can be bent when the need arises. I have also learned that the governments of the poorest countries are also very corrupt, and if you want something to happen, they expect you to pay a bribe. This means that unless you have outside sources confirming your data, your infomation can only be approximate, and might very well be non-existant, or skewed away from the truth.
Based on what I have been told, Internet in much of Africa is only available sporadically, to the wealthy, and in larger cities. I have also been told that the mail system is not reliable (my daughter had to send documents to a reliable business by DSL, and then her fiancee had to travel 40 minutes to pick up his mail). Geneology these days is mostly passed through the Internet as well as through the mail. My understanding is that much of geneological infomation in Africa is passed down through family lines and oral tradition. Add to that the fact that there can be so many dialects and languages involved in a single area (my daughter’s fiancee speaks 6 local dialects and languages). I think these conditions all act as barriers to discovering geneological data in much of Africa.
By the way, my future son in law has 3 university degrees (he’s working on a 4th degree). He just had his visa interview! We are so excited!