The 2021 Population and Housing Census which is scheduled to take place in April and May next year will be the first digital census in the country.

In a newsletter from the Ghana Statistical Service, (GSS) the digital census is said to involve the use of Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing devices (tablets) for electronic data capture and Geographic Positioning Systems (GPS) for recording coordinates of structures as recommended by the United Nations.

The Census, which was originally scheduled for 2020 has been postponed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

The digital census has brought with it several technological innovations to
improve census implementation and the production of relevant, timely and quality census data.

These innovations include the use of a dashboard for data monitoring, employment of geo-spatial data to validate and complement census mapping work and deployment of a host of IT solutions.

This includes Logistics Management, Information System, online recruitment portal, Learning Management Systems, and mobile applications to provide the public with regular updates on census activities.

The Ghana Statistical Service did this in collaboration with the government and development partners such as the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), World Bank, UK office for National Statistics (ONS) and UN Economic Commission for in Africa (UNECA) achieved the following:

The successful conduct of two trial censuses and delineation of the entire country into Enumeration and Supervisory Areas, prepared drafts of training materials, trained over 50 Master Trainers and recruited
close to 2,000 National Trainers.

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