Africa-Press – Tanzania. THE National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) has received 200 tablets worth 177mil/- from the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women (UN Women) to aid in data collection process for the 2022 Population and Housing Census.
UN Women has contributed to the census to support digital data collection and to strengthen the availability of gender-disaggregated data collected by NBS and the Office of the chief government statistician Zanzibar (OCGS).
Speaking at the handover ceremony in Dar es Salaam yesterday, UN Women Representative to Tanzania, Hodan Addou said they have been able to provide the tablets with the support of the Government of Finland, and as part of the United Nations System and international community’s support to the census.
“The handover is in line with a long and productive partnership between UN Women, NBS and OCGS where since 2018, UN Women has been collaborating with NBS to implement the ‘Make Every Woman and Girl Count’ programme that aims to radically shift how gender statistics are used, created, shared and accessed,” she said.
Ms Haddou said they hope that the small contribution will better support digital data collection not only for the census, but also for subsequent household surveys, and will ultimately strengthen the availability of gender-disaggregated data collected by NBS and OCGS.
In recent decades, she said Tanzania has made positive gains for women and girls. Despite this, these women continue to face many obstacles, where women living with disabilities are especially vulnerable, face even more forms of discrimination and are further left behind.
“Because they make up a small portion of the population, their demands are not often sufficiently identified and represented by traditional household surveys. The National Census is therefore extremely essential to pinpoint the locations of marginalised communities as well as the difficulties they encounter,” she said.
Chief Government Statistician for Zanzibar, Salum Kassim Ali said 205,000 tablets were required, of which 1,080 had already been received. He also stated that they anticipate receiving the remaining tablets at any moment.
“We have started receiving donations from various sources, we are grateful to UN Women today for giving us 200, there are other stakeholders who donated and we hope to receive another 10,000 and by the end of the month we will have received all of them,” he said.
He said preparations for the national census to be held on August 23, this year are going well as it has come a long way after starting training for trainers who will be involved and expect to provide education at the regional level from July 6, this year.
Finland Embassy Head of Cooperation, Timo Voipio said it’s every citizen’s right to be counted and also the responsibility of every citizen to participate.
“This is essential to inform national plans. In this initiative, it is vital that we have strong data and this will be of great benefit to the government of Tanzania,” he said.
He said Finland was consequently thrilled to support the census and work with UN Women in supporting women’s leadership for a number of years.
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