Uganda will carry out the national population and housing census in August next year, a year earlier than expected, according to Chris Baryomunsi, the Minister of ICT and National Guidance.
While communicating the decisions taken by Cabinet sitting on September 12 at State House Entebbe, Baryomunsi said that Cabinet fixed census night for August 24/25, 2023.
Last year, Uganda National Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) Executive Director, Chris Mukiza, said they had plans of carrying out the national population and housing census this year 2022.
Although the statistics body always carries out the census after every 10 years, it faced a delay after the 2002 census and ended up conducting the census meant for 2012 in 2014. Mukiza said UBOS decided to go back to the initial 10-year schedule, which has put the next census in 2022, that has now been further pushed to next year.
He said they decided to do this early to help in the implementation of the ongoing National Development Plan 3, which seeks to increase household income and improve the quality of life. Mukiza explained that they required Shillings 138.6billion to carry out the census of livestock and national population and housing census.
According to UBOS, the COVID-19 pandemic presented with lots of challenges, which stopped them from conducting nine surveys.
These include the Uganda National Household survey 2019/2020, the Annual Agricultural Survey, the Census of Business Establishment, informal cross Border Trade survey, National livestock census, the National service delivery Survey, Baseline Education Census of Education and Tourism immigration data capture.
Uganda’s population is projected at 47 million people.