Background of the African Census Analysis Project (ACAP)

Introduction
Brief History of Census-Taking in Africa
Availability of the Census
African Census Analysis Project
The Future of ACAP

<< Brief History of Census-Taking in Africa

Availability of the Census

Of all the censuses taken before and immediately after independence very few records and little documentation of the data-collection process have been preserved. An extreme example is found in the two Congos where they currently have no electronic copies of their census enumerations. Preservation of this information was the reason for the creation of the African Census Analysis Project (ACAP), as a clear response to the UN African Census Project which promoted the standardization and regular collection of census data.

Another response to the UN African Census Project has been the professionalization of African statistical offices, where there have been considerable improvements. The censuses now include an elaborate publication plan and the reports have moved a long way from simply listing statistical tables to being more analytical and thematic. The census data-collection skills have been sharpened and data are being collected to address many social issues. These new data have led to census reports that are somewhat more analytical. Nevertheless, censuses remained underutilized.

While technology has improved dramatically and storage is becoming increasingly better, the preservation of census data continues to need further development. Preserving the data is only part of the process of maintaining a working archive. In order to understand past census data it is essential that better records be maintained of the data-entry process. An understanding of how many of the computations and imputations were made in the data is rarely documented. While it appears that considerable efforts were made to preserve computations in some earlier censuses; this has not been the case in recent ones.¹ It is not unusual to find codebooks with little or no background information about variable coding, imputations, and computations. A great deal of turnover of statistical office staff likewise results in the loss of basic information about the history of the data processing of the census. Understanding the process and reasons for computations and imputations is crucial for understanding and analyzing the data. It also allows one to check for data quality and errors.

Modern censuses of national populations have been conducted more systematically and regularly since independence across Africa, except in countries that have experienced significant political, military, or economic instability. In the section that follows we describe the ACAP initiative, our noble efforts to preserve this important part of African heritage.

¹ A case in point is the first national census for Cameroon conducted in 1976. The computation procedures used for these data are available in the census documentation, and provide a clear idea of how certain variables were obtained. On the contrary, the 1987 census has no such information for any of the computations.

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