Ethiopia Technology Set Tender

A five-day experts group meeting on supporting electronic data collection and dissemination in censuses-making opened in Addis Ababa Ethiopia Monday with Economic Commission for Africas ECA African Centre for Statistics Director Oliver Chinganya emphasizing the importance of population and housing censuses for the continent.Mr. Chinganya said censuses were a fundamental source for producing small area statistics adding timely dissemination of good quality census data was crucial for national and international development goals.The meeting seeks to enhance participants understanding of using new technologies to improve census data collection and dissemination. This will be achieved by sharing key lessons and experiences from countries who have used or about to use new technology for data collection and or dissemination in their census.Population and housing censuses provide vital information for monitoring the Agenda for Sustainable Development and the African Unions Agenda 2063 in addition to a wide range of statistical areas allowing disaggregation by small geographic areas and small population groups said Mr. Chinganya. He said population and housing censuses were one of the most complex and costly statistical operations due to the involvement of a vast number of field workers requiring extensive preparation delineating entire country enumeration areas and mapping all households massive awareness campaign and post-enumeration activities.There is a critical need for a continuous effort of using alternative approaches and technologies to improve data quality timeliness and dissemination of census results while considering increasing costs of carrying out the census the ACS Director said.Several African countries have begun preparations for the 2020 round of population and housing censuses. Egypt Lesotho and Malawi have already undertaken the census while several others are currently at advanced stages in preparation.The use of technology particularly the use of mobile tablets has become part of the 2020 round with the expansion in mobile connectivity on the continent and mobile devices with GPS capability providing new opportunities.Mr. Chinganya said the use of technology unless given due planning and consideration also brought about challenges.The challenge we have experienced in tablets-based census-taking in Ethiopia and Kenya is calibrating the huge number of tablets so that they can be ready for fieldwork he said.The ECA supported Ethiopia to prepare 180000 tablets through developing mobile apps and web-based applications. Currently the organization is supporting Kenya for its upcoming census while discussions are ongoing with Ghana on similar matters.There are many challenges facing countries in this round which require critical intervention namely device sourcing software and ICT infrastructure mapping questionnaire construction data security in remote transferring of cases among others said Mr. Chinganya. We need to cooperate and coordinate to mitigate the challenges through discussion and sharing of ideas to assist each other with knowledge technical assistance and resource sharing.As a result the ECA is proposing an experts group meeting on using new technology to strengthen the capacity of national statistical offices and agencies in charge of population and housing census for improving data quality and timely dissemination of census results. The meeting will allow countries to have a better understanding of the challenges and benefits of adopting new technologies through sharing experiences with other countries and agencies that have utilised or plan to utilise new technologies said Mr. Chinganya.The ECA he said will continue to promote the use of innovation in statistics with its convening power at a regional level in partnership with international regional training centres technology partners and mainly member States who are on the ground facing the real challenge.Key participants in the workshop were drawn from Burkina Faso Ethiopia Malawi Cameroon Ghana Mozambique Cote DIvoire Kenya Seychelles Egypt Lesotho Zambia Eswatini and Liberia as well as the African Development Bank the African Union Commission and other related organisations.