How a Census Can Drive Sustainable Development in Africa

An enumerator works with staff at a psychiatric hospital in Accra to accurately count their patient population. Jordi Perdigó/Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data

In 2020 the West African Country of Ghana will conduct a census. This is a massive undertaking. Some 60,000 people will be deployed across the country in an effort to count every single person in Ghana on what is known as "census night." This is expected next March.

In a recent reporting trip to Ghana, I got a sense of what this process entails. Along with a few other journalists, I shadowed census takers, known as enumerators, as they tested their systems in a few places around Accra. This included a mental health hospital and an urban slum. The idea is to ensure that even marginalized groups are counted in this census, so enumerators are designing strategies to count people who have no fixed address or might be in institutions, like hospitals.

The enumerators were also field-testing their tablets. Unlike in pre…