In an effort to better understand the country’s population, Ghana launched its first fully digital national Housing and Population Census (PHC) On Monday.
Ghana’s last census was conducted in 2010, which put the number of the population at 24.6 million.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 census was postponed until 2021.
According to the Ghana Statistics Service (GSS), 67,419 field enumerators have been dispatched to collect data around the country and on digital tablets within the country’s borders.
Samuel Annim, Chief Government Statistician, said the enumerators will target people who are traveling, those who are in short-term institutions like hospitals, hotels, and jails, and people who are considered homeless in their current location.
“The counting that we do at GSS during a PHC is the snapshot of the population, and it is an all-inclusive exercise,” added the government statistician.
He urged all those within the country as of the commencement of the census to make themselves available to be counted since the population numbers would help in planning for various sectors of the country’s socio-economic architecture.
Peter Takyi Peprah, the Field Operations Manager at the GSS, said in an interview that the digital data collection marked a significant difference between the 2021 census and the previous ones.
“The digitisation will help us deliver results more promptly and accurately than we used to have with the paper and pen data collection in the past,’’ he stated.
Dennis Agyemang, a Ghanaian bus driver, said that he was glad to have been counted on Sunday night since that would help the government to plan well in developing the country.