WINDHOEK – Preparations for the first national agricultural census undertaken in 20 years are well on track after training by the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) of enumerators of the pilot agricultural census, the pre-cursor to the Agriculture Census 2013/14, was concluded by December 16 last year.
All the enumerators are young people attached to the National Youth Service (NYS). Confirming the completion of the pilot project and the training of enumerators, Ndamona Kali, Director of Statistics of the NSA, told New Era that the actual census will commence soon. “The NSA will announce this next week,” she said, stressing the importance of proper training of the enumerators to ensure that they are ready to carry out their duties smoothly and flawlessly. “The NSA sees it as its social responsibility to enlist young Namibians to carry out the surveys and censuses that it undertakes. It gives Namibian youths much needed employment, education and a sense of self-worth, being involved in this. The training that the would-be enumerators get helps put them on the right path to start a career. These enumerators will be carrying out the pilot and actual agricultural census, both which are vital for the nation. This survey is being conducted in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Forestry,” she said.
She further explained that the pilot survey will be carried out in the //Karas, Hardap, Zambezi, Ohangwena, Kunene and Otjizondupa regions with the objective to test the survey instruments, test the computer-assisted personal interviewing technique and test various methodologies for crop area measurements. The pilot project was conducted in both commercial and communal areas. Training for the main census already kicked off and the census will start after some three weeks of training in the Zambezi and Kavango regions, because those areas receive early rains and are also flood prone. The census will be carried out under the world-wide World Census of Agriculture – 2010 (WCA-2010) programme promoted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). WCA-2010 provides guidelines on concepts, definitions, classifications and methodologies in carrying out such censuses. It also provides enough flexibility to countries to create a census plan as per their needs, while ensuring that a minimum set of essential data for international comparison is made available through the agricultural census. Over 100 countries participate in this programme.
Dr John Steytler, head of the NSA, emphasised the importance of the first agricultural census in 20 years, saying the results of the pilot project will be put to good use to ensure the actual census runs smoothly. He reminded the audience that some 174 000 Namibians are employed full-time in the agricultural sector with another 100 000 working in the subsistence sector. Kali said it is a major project, which is not restricted to Namibia but is taking place all over Africa. “Having the young people from the NYS trained, ready and eager to carry out the census is something we are exceedingly proud of. We urge all Namibians who come into contact with the enumerators to extend their help and assist the NSA in collecting the data necessary to help further develop Namibia,” she said. Based on the set-up of the sector, the census undertaking will deploy different methods of data collection to the two sub-sectors. In the communal sub-sector the method will be face to face interviews, while in the commercial sub-sector it will be done by e-mail questionnaire.
By Deon Schlechter