African governments urged to commit to census programme
By Cristina Muller, ECA, 28 April 2005

Addis Ababa, 28 April 2005 - Given that Africa is considered the weakest link in the world census programme, governments on the continent must boost their commitment to ensure the success of the 2010 round of population and housing censuses, experts said.

Launched this year and continuing up to 2014, this programme was the subject of discussions by the African statistical community this week during the Committee on Development Information (CODI) held at the ECA in Addis Ababa.

Civil war and economic hardship have kept many African countries from active participation in the programme.

“For us in Africa the census is often the only source of information on who we are, especially because we lack extensive civil registration” said Ghanaian statistician Grace Bediako.

“Most African countries are quite new, meaning we would only have undertaken about four censuses so far,” she explained. “But when it’s time to conduct the census, countries don’t get the necessary financial support from governments, and it is put off.”

A census is particularly important for countries in formation or in emerging democracies. It allows a country to understand its social and economic composition through the collection of information on ethnic groups, religious beliefs, and marital status, among others.

The challenge is to ensure that governments will not use the census and statistics as a political tool.

“In an emerging democracy it is particularly important that a credible statistics agency lead the agenda, which will have the utmost confidence of the public and of the international community,” said Risenga Maluleke, Executive manager of the Office of the Statistician General, in South Africa. “Basically, if you can’t measure, it you can’t manage it.”

Experts agree that the key is to ensure legislation and to strengthen statistical compilation, analysis and dissemination capacity in a bid to guarantee transparency.

Increasing capacity for statistics on the continent has been a challenge, with some good results.

Considered an example in the African statistical community, Uganda has been able to secure appropriate attention to the issue from politicians by seizing opportunities strategically and providing numbers in a manner that has been both timely and easy to understand.

“Once the politician is presented with the numbers, it becomes a tool to him, and he will demand more and more,” said John Mukasa, the Executive Director of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics. “Our challenge has been to prove that statistics are useful to management and governance, both to the politician and to society at large.”