Professor Samuel Annim, Government Statistician, has disclosed that the Ghana Statistical Service is set to conduct its maiden Electronic Census in May in a bid to collect complete and accurate data of structures, households and persons within the borders of Ghana.
Speaking at a seminar to engage intellectuals and professionals on the process, Mr. Annim explained that the exercise would offer updated demographic, social and economic data to sustain national development activities.
According to him, the information provided by individuals will be used to track the implementation of global and continental development goals, including the Sustainable Development Goals, International Conference on Population and Development goals, and Africa’s Agenda 2063.
The three weeks exercise, which would cost Ghana, $91 million, would be used to gather about 2.6 million indicators from the national to community level. With this, some 70,000 enumerators would be spread nationwide to collect data using a set of questions and geographic positioning on tablets from the about 52,000 Enumeration Areas.
“The census will produce data on who we are, how many we are, as well as where and how we live. It will be used by stakeholders, including, private sector, businesses, civil society organizations, development partners, special interest groups, academics and media, to generate information for general use”.
Mr. Annim further stated that, particularly in areas of policy and decision-making, the data would inform the distribution of local government funds, plan government budgets, inform decisions on the public infrastructure needed in the localities and provide guidance on the creation of districts based on population size.
He said the information derived from the Census could be to monitor trends in the economic well-being of the population, and create maps to speed up emergency services to households in need of assistance.
Touching on housing, Prof. Annim said the Census would provide data on the current housing needs of the population, and obtain information on the proportion of structures with Ghana Digital Post Addresses and guide planning based on the data on uncompleted structures.
Notably, he explains this will provide data on residential and non-residential structures to inform policy where there was deficit in either categories and provide data on the use of structures listed to ascertain the stock of habitable structures.
Commending the move by GSS, Professor Paul Nkegbe, an Associate Professor of Agriculture and Applied Economics and Entrepreneurship Development at the University of Development Studies, said census was at the heart of development and decision making.
Mr. Nkegbe said the paper based data collection was problematic and had effect on data quality and thus commended Ghana for joining the likes of Malawi, Ethiopia and Mexico to conduct e-census.
Prof. Nkegbe said the approach would improve data quality, reduce time and cost by eliminating a separate process for data collection, conduct analysis and generate maps and graphs as well as other statistical tables.
He further called for the development of a National Census Dashboard as well as the integration of old national census results to determine the development trajectory of the country.
