Census mapping ends

THE ongoing field mapping and household listing exercise being undertaken by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (ZimStat) in preparation for the national population census in April 2022 will be completed next week.

To date, the exercise, which involves partitioning the country into unique enumeration areas, has been completed in eight provinces with the exercise set to be completed in the outstanding provinces - Matabeleland South and Mashonaland East - by January 21.

ZimStat public relations manager Ms Mercy Chidemo told The Sunday Mail that completion of the field mapping exercise will pave the way for the recruitment of enumerators.

ZimStat requires more than 50 000 enumerators and other personnel to conduct the census.

"The field mapping and household listing exercise coverage is at 99,1 percent, with eight provinces having been completed.

"The completed provinces are Bulawayo, Harare, Mashonaland Central, Mashonaland West, Masvingo, Midlands, Manicaland and Matabeleland North.

"Matabeleland South is expected to be completed by January 16, 2022, while Mashonaland East will be completely covered by January 20, 2022 thereby meeting the deadline of January 21, 2022," she said.

Ms Chidemo said once recruited, the enumerators will immediately undergo training ahead of their deployment.

"After the mapping exercise is concluded, the next crucial stage is recruitment and training of census personnel.

"These trainings comprise of training of trainers, enumeration areas supervisor training and census enumerator training.

"Enumerator training is a massive exercise and a crucial element for the collection of high-quality data."

Enumerators will undergo training in the correct reading and use of enumeration area maps, data entry and interviewing skills.

"Training of enumerators will be followed by data collection, analysis, dissemination of census results and conducting the post-enumeration survey to evaluate the census," Ms Chidemo said.

ZimStat will this year deploy a high-tech data collection system - the Computer-Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) - which transmits data collected by enumerators over the internet to a central mainframe in real-time.

As a result, the census exercise will be completed within six months.

Previously, it took the national statistics agency up to two years to collect and process data before producing the final census report.

Ms Chidemo said the CAPI system was successfully deployed during a pilot census conducted last year.

"ZimStat conducted a Population and Housing Pilot Census from November 18 to 28, 2021.

"The Pilot Census was conducted to pre-test the census instruments, processes and all other logistical arrangements in preparation for the actual census that is scheduled for April 2022.

"Some of the key findings from the pilot census were that the Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI) method was effective as enumerators managed to complete their work assignments within the stipulated 10 days," she said.

"The CAPI system proved to be not only effective but very efficient in that it eliminates some of the rigorous processes such as data entry and data cleaning in the Paper Assisted Personal Interviewing method".

This year's census will be the fifth population census since Independence.

The first was held in 1982, while the rest were conducted at 10-year intervals.