VOICE OF AMERICA
Ghana is preparing to conduct its first digital population and housing census beginning in March 2020. It will join Eswatini, Kenya and Malawi as one of the first countries in Africa to collect census data electronically.
Ghana’s 2010 census featured paper questionnaires. It took months to gather and assemble the data, and about 3% of the population was left out of the survey.
Now the government will use tablets and satellite images to make sure everyone is counted. Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia said the data would help fight inequality. “We must count everyone and make everyone accountable to pay their fair share in taxes that would be used to target assistance to those who may not have had access to critical social services previously,” he said.
The census is expected to cost $84 million, about 50% more than the previous count. The government has hired about 60,000 enumerators but still is working with the United Nations on how best to get the 65,000 tablets needed to conduct the surveys.
Officials say Kenya may be able to lend some tablets after it completes its first digital census.
Araba Forson, chief statistician for the Ghana Statistical Service, said technology would prevent enumerators from understaffing densely populated areas — a problem encountered in 2010 because population maps were out of date.
“Satellite imagery will tell us that there are people living in this part of the country that the enumerator may not have visited,” she said. “Using electronic data collection, we will be able to make sure that everyone has been covered.”
Ghana’s urban population has more than doubled during the past two decades, rising from 7 million in 1997 to almost 16 million in 2017, according to the World Bank.
Comments are closed.