Namibia prepares to conduct census after 2-year hiatus

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The Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) will recruit about 13,000 temporary staff ahead of the 2023 Population and Housing Census, an official said Wednesday.

The census in the country has been postponed since 2021 and 2022 due to competing priorities such as the COVID-19 budget prioritization, but this year for the 2023-2024 financial year, an amount of 706 million Namibia dollars (about 47.4 million U.S. dollars) was allocated by the government for the NSA to undertake the exercise.

The census is conducted every ten years and is essentially a process of collecting, processing, analyzing, publishing, and disseminating demographic, socioeconomic, and spatial data of the population during a specific period.

‘We are sincerely grateful that our government has committed itself to fund this critical exercise which is a major source of national data required for planning, decision-making, and monitoring of development goals at the lowest level possible,’ said NSA Statistician General Alex Shimuafeni at a media update event.

Although Shimuafeni did not mention a specific date for the census, he said the census’ main enumeration is planned to take place from August to October 2023 across the southwestern African nation.

Source: The Namibian Press Agency