Population Census: Solid base for development planning

The government of Cameroon is bracing up for a national population and housing survey; a tool that will help improve its decision-making for an inclusive and sustainable development.

Since the Head of State decreed the operation, the fourth of its kind, on September 15, 2015, the population has certainly been waiting to know the way forward. The team to champion the exercise has been constituted and installed. Led by Economy, Planning and Regional Development Minister, Louis Paul Motaze, the inter-ministerial team held its first steering committee meeting on Friday October 30, 2015.

The technical committee as well as regional, divisional and sub divisional committees were also commissioned the same day with an overall objective - Work in synergy to produce credible statistics on Cameroon’s population at the end of the operation.

Friday’s meeting no doubt opens the floodgate to a countdown to knowing how the country has grown over the years. Records show that the first population census in 1976 put Cameroon at 7,663,246 inhabitants, 10,493,655 in 1986 and 17,463,836 in 2005.

2015 projections published on the website of the National Studies and Census Office (BUCREP) put the population now at 22,179,707 inhabitants. From observation, the country’s population has been evolving and the fourth operation under preparation will at term come up with clear number of Cameroonians.

Experts hold that a reliable population census is important for a country to adequately plan her growth, deliver services and solve her economic and sometimes socio-political problems.

For instance, a national government dishing out economic assistance to her population normally uses her population census data to direct aid to parts of the country with the highest poverty rates. It holds same for the creation of schools, hospitals and construction of low-cost houses as well as other socio-economic infrastructure needed by the population. From this therefore, a country that does not know how many people it has cannot better plan her development.

Cognizant of the importance of the statistics, especially on how many people live where; their age groups and living conditions, those called upon to lead the exercise now will need to set a solid base for success. Knowing who will be counted, why he/she will be counted, the steps to follow, who is capable of integrating the census exercise at what level and when the exercise proper takes off require careful planning.

Training field data collection agents and those to analyse the data should not be the least of things to do. Above all, households will absolutely need to be sensitized on how to go about the exercise so as to pre-empt faulty information.

It goes without saying that there are people in the country who are skeptical about everybody and everything. Either they will chicken out from collaborating or will give information that will be everything but the reality. For instance, those not well informed about a census may, for fear of the unknown, hold back vital information. Meanwhile, others well informed of what development census can bring may exaggerate. All of these render the exercise faulty and the end results not credible enough to be the base for better decision taking.

Whatever the case, the error margin has to be minimized as much as possible. This begins from the base. There should be minimum objectivity in the recruitment of those to pilot the exercise and their skills imperatively need to be sharpened. With telecommunications gadgets improving by the day, so much paperwork may need to be reduced.

All communication channels; radio, television, newspaper, social media, telephone, billboards and banners… can be of help to lay the groundwork. Anything short of reliable statistics on the population will be synonymous with deceiving government on the direction she takes to journey the country into a middle-income economy in 2035 as wished by the Yaounde authorities.