The long-awaited Namibia Population and Housing Census will take place in August this year, and will for the first time be a spatially-enabled and digital census.
The Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA)’s Statistician-General and CEO Alex Shimuafeni said at a media briefing on Wednesday that this follows government’s allocation of N$706 million to the agency for the 2023/24 financial year to undertake the census.
The last census was held in 2011, while the 2021 Population and Housing Census was postponed twice. According to the NSA Act, the agency must produce a population and housing census every 10 years on a date determined by the director-general of the National Planning Commission.
Shimuafeni said the modus operandi will be that NSA enumerators will visit every household in Namibia during a three-week period to undertake a total count, and collect demographic and social data. This information will not be disclosed to third parties or unauthorised persons, in accordance with Section 44 (1) of the Statistics Act.
“To ensure confidentiality, all census personnel, including enumerators and team supervisors, including NSA permanent staff, will sign an oath of secrecy. The information to be collected is anonymised and processed in order to be in line with the confidentiality clauses as set out in the Statistics Act,” he emphasised.
The NSA will recruit around 13 000 temporary staff, and all census personnel and equipment will be sourced locally, except the 11 000 tablets, which will be borrowed from the United Nations Economic Commission of Africa. 2 000 tablets will also be borrowed from Statistics South Africa, in line with the South-South cooperation modus operandi.
The transportation of the tablets to and from Namibia will be facilitated by the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), with 2 900 vehicles required to ensure enumerators reach all areas of Namibia.
The census is essentially a process of collecting, processing, analysing, publishing and disseminating demographic, socio-economic and spatial data of the population during a specific timeframe.