By: Saidu Jalloh
At the official opening of the 2025 Population and Housing Census Assessment and Support Mission at New Brookfield Hotel on the 13th January 2025, Chairman Board of Director Statistics Sierra Leone, Moses William, assured Sierra Leoneans that the 2025 Population and Housing Census would be fully digitalized.
In his opening statement, Mr. Williams asserted that the council serves as the governing body of Statistics Sierra Leone; emphasizing that their job is to ensure that management of Statistics Sierra Leone perform their work.
‘’This is first in history digital census, and they are still learning from digital census also hoping to build on it for the next censuses to come,’’ Chairman Board of Director added.
Andrew Bob Johnny, Statistician General of Statistics Sierra Leone commented that management of Social and Economic Development works in conformity of Statistics; stating that the role of Population and Housing Census is to collect, process and disseminate such data to government for inform policy.
He continued that generating relevance attributes is essential to the work of statistics and putting details for areas, and small population groups is a foundation for better planning.
Mr. Johnny explained that the access to such comparable and internationally data means that the Government of Sierra Leone has dissed out an understandable that would not miss out or being excluded. He also eluded that population counts are also important to development since the contributed to the denominator to various economic, social and health indices.
The Statistician General narrated that some indices from previous population and housing censuses were contributed immensely in monitory progress in critical indicator in global and national development such as Sustainable Development Goals and Medium Term National Development Plan.
He added that with assistance of UNFPA, United States Census Bureau and UNECA with the objective of providing technical support to Stat SL with proper position for 2025 census. Mr. Johnny said a review would be done in respect of physical census process by geographical mapping; pilot census and logistics transmission would be reviewed.
Madam Kanyeh Barley, Ministry of Planning and Economic development said MoPED is responsible for planning, as well making sure that 2025 census would be well inclusive and the result of the census would be as critical reference for distribution for wealth.
She stated that they are prioritizing the government Big Five Game Changer Agenda, adding that the result of the census would be also used for electoral purposes.
She recognized the wide range of uses of census data by many people to inform themselves for other purposes and also mentioned the impact of development intervention to the 2025 census.
Madam Barley emphasized that the government had made tremendous strides to see the successful conduct of the census and also made financial commitment to ensure smooth running of the census.
UN Resident Coordinator, Safari Wakana revealed that Statistics Sierra Leone provides data that informs policy decision, mobilization, resource mobilization and distribution. She said in Sierra Leone, census would help identify the gaps and opportunities that enable approach to development for citizens.
Wakana announced that the success of the census would offer invaluable insight into the population size, distributions and characteristics by providing comprehensive snapshot and the information is essential in different ways.
