Abstract

Recent technological developments have offered national statistical offices in Africa many opportunities to modernize their census operations, especially with regard to constructing digital maps, electronic capture of census data during the interview, real-time validation, and dissemination of census results. The use of technology has become an integral part of census processes critical for improving cost-efficiency of the census and data quality (coverage, accuracy, timeliness). Depending heavily on technologies in conducting and management of census operations brings new challenges and operational considerations that have to be considered in planning and designing census activities. The 2020 round of Population and Housing Censuses (PHC) has been experiencing a significant progress in moving to digital censuses. With more than 37 countries in Africa having conducted digital censuses across the African region during the 2020 round of censuses, some experiences, challenges, lessons have been learnt. The advantages of digital censuses are exhibited by Ghana, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania etc, which were able to release their preliminary results in less than 3 months. Moreover, countries like South Africa, Ghana, Sierra Leone and Rwanda which undertook their fieldwork during the height of COVID-19 managed to mitigate its impact by using tablets. However, some countries experienced budgetary constraints so innovative ways to source for IT equipment had to be used and these included tablets sharing.