If you live in Zambia or spend long periods of time here you may at some point need to register a birth or marriage with the British High Commission in Lusaka or consular services in London. You can find out how to do both here.

Information on Birth Registration

We offer you the opportunity to obtain a consular birth certificate for your child, providing he or she is born in Zambia and is automatically a British Citizen at birth. There are several advantages to having a Consular birth certificate:

• it provides sufficient evidence of nationality for passport purposes (you don’t have to worry about producing any other documentation);
• replacement copies can be obtained easily at the High Commission in Lusaka or from the General Records Office in Southport;
• and it is a much more widely recognised document than a Zambian birth certificate. To obtain a consular birth certificate all you need to do is complete an application form and submit it together with the required documents. A list is available from consular section.

We also provide a consular death registration service. For further details please contact our consular section. 

Information on marriage registration

The legal paperwork you need to complete for an overseas wedding can be confusing. Fortunately we can help you to get some of the information you need. The procedure for marrying in Zambia is as follows;

Any person wishing to get married in Zambia must complete Affidavits and Notice of Marriage forms which are available from the Civic Centre in Lusaka. The completed forms must be submitted to the Local Government Administrator's Office at the Civic Centre where a Certificate of No Impediment (CNI) will be issued for production to the person who is to solemnize the marriage. Both parties will be required to produce their original birth certificates. It normally takes 3 weeks to process a CNI and costs K 50,000. There is, however, a fast-track service costing K130,000 and the CNI can be issued within 24 hours.

Once the marriage has taken place, the certificate must be taken to the Registry of Births, Marriages and Deaths in order to register the marriage and to obtain a Registrar's Certificate of Marriage. This must be done within three months of the marriage ceremony. At least one of the parties to the marriage must be resident within the district for at least 15 days prior to the ceremony taking place. The Registrar's Office, however, advise that this is rarely enforced. Please note that same sex marriages are not allowed or recognised in Zambia.
Further information can be obtained from the Registrar's Office in Lusaka on telephone (+260 211) 228196/228197/228201 or on fax 236427.

The Lilayi Lodge in Lusaka and the Royal Livingstone Hotel in Livingstone both handle weddings and should be able to give you some advice if you need. You can e-mail Lilayi Lodge at lilayi@zamsaf.co.zm and the Royal Livingstone Hotel guest relations officer on MManda@sunint.co.za. 
 

Please  note:

The above information on marrying in Zambia is provided as a general guide and is based upon information provided to the FCO by the relevant local authorities. The information is therefore only up to date and accurate to the extent that such authorities provide us with timely and accurate information. Accordingly the FCO does not guarantee that this information is accurate and will not be liable for any inaccuracies in this information. British nationals wishing to obtain information about marriage must also contact the relevant local authority to be sure of the requirements that they need in order for their ceremony to go ahead.