WINDHOEK, March 2 — 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.
Shimuafeni also said Namibia’s census will, for the first time, be spatially-enabled and digital. “All census personnel and equipment will be sourced locally, except the 13,000 tablets, which will be borrowed from external entities. In particular, 11,000 tablets will be borrowed from the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, and the other 2,000 tablets will be borrowed from Statistics South Africa in line with South-South cooperation.”
Namibia is one of the world’s least densely populated places. According to its last Population and Housing Census held in 2011, the total population of the country was 2,113,077. (Xinhua)
