Tablet delays set to push forward national census date 

The delayed release of funds for the census has disrupted the planned execution of the national census and is likely to have it deferred for some months.

The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos) carries out the census every 10 years and this year’s exercise was scheduled to be held on August 24 and 25. However, Dr Chris Mukiza, the Ubos executive director, says there are critical prior activities that are not yet completed, notable example being delivery of tablets to be used for enumeration as well as the recruitment and training of enumerators.

“On status mapping, we have so far completed 60 per cent of the work but all factors have to be ready before we kick off the exercise. We also need time to fully set up other ICT equipment like servers, because we are going to be getting data from the field across the country before processing it from here,” he said.

“Therefore, we are considering seeking approval from the minister of Finance [Matia Kasaija], who will go to cabinet to push forward the census to a future date but not far away.”

The last National Population and Housing Census was last conducted in 2014. At that time, the results indicated that Uganda had a population of 34 million people.

Currently, Uganda is estimated to have over 41 million people. Meanwhile, Godfrey Nabongo the Ubos deputy executive director, noted that the bureau had financial challenges in the last financial year and had to seek the authorization of the minister of Finance to allow them to repurpose some funds to undertake most of the pre-census activities.

“Thankfully, they [Finance] allowed and that we were able to achieve most of the targets,” he said.

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