The Vice President, Dr. Mahamudu Bawumia, has touted the Ghana Statistical Service’s readiness to conduct this year’s population and housing census through a paperless system.

According to him, this will go a long way to push the government’s digitalization agenda, and provide a more accurate database which will aid in solving housing deficits and poverty-related issues in the country.

He made these assertions during the launch of the 100-day countdown to the census night on Friday, March 19, 2021.

“The Statistical Service will this year, conduct its first digital population and housing census in line with this digitalisation agenda. This is a historic moment. I’m highly impressed that the GSS has incorporated the ICT module in the census to ascertain the level of digital application and access in the country. Indeed, the census will provide comprehensive data on ICT access and usage in the country to enhance development in the sector.”

On his part, the Government Statistician, Prof Samuel Annim, says the service is well-prepared to conduct a successful national exercise.

He explained, “For the first time, we’ve bought more than 1,500 laptops for the census. We’ve employed data quality monitors, and they’re going to review the data that is coming in, generate report, and share it with the field supervisors. In addition, the field supervisors will be expected to do re-interviews.”

“And what technology is bringing to the fore is that we’ll be able to readily compare the outputs that we are getting from the supervisors vis-à-vis those that we are getting from the enumerators. From these perspectives, certainly, this year’s census is far from a manual based approach.”

Dr. Bawumia announced that the 2021 Population and Housing Census the scheduled date for the exercise’s commencement; June 27, 2021.

The exercise is expected to capture demographic and socio-economic data on Ghanaians, as well as track national development at all levels.

The 2021 census which was initially scheduled to be conducted in 2020 had to be postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The exercise is now scheduled to begin on Sunday, June 27 and is to last for some 14 days.
It will be recalled that as of the last time the nation conducted such an exercise in 2010, Ghana’s population was estimated at over 24 million people.

This year’s exercise which comes off amidst the COVID-9 related restrictions will employ the digital capturing of data.

Preparations for the census have already reached an advanced stage with many key activities such as the demarcation of the entire country into about 52,000 enumeration areas.

In addition, about 75,000 census officials to be deployed for the exercise have undergone recruitment and training.

This year’s census would be the sixth conducted in Ghana since the post-independence era.

The nation conducted National Census in 1960, 1970, 1984, 2000 and 2010.

Ghana’s population has since moved from 6.7 million in 1960 to 24.6 million in 2010 and currently estimated at 30 million.