By Dailystarnewsug.com
Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) has announced that Uganda’s population has increased to 45.9 million people in the last ten years.
The body’s Executive Director Dr. Chris Mukiza, while addressing the gathering during the release of the 2024 census preliminary results at Serena Hotel in Kampala revealed that UBOS covered a total of 11 million households, an increase from the 7.2 million households covered in 2014 exercise.
“The 2024 Housing and Population Census indicate; Uganda has a population of 45.9 million people up from 34.6 million in 2014. This means there has been an increment of 11.3 million people in the last 10 years,’’ Dr. Mikiza announced.
He also said that the number includes refugees who total to 780,061 while the average household size is 4.4 people from 4.7 in 2014.
“We have 51% females in our population which means males are fewer. The preliminary results also indicate that youths now account for 22.7% of Uganda’s total population while the elderly are at 5%.’’ He said.
Government set May, 9, 2024 as the census night onto which all census questions were referenced by UBOS
This was the first digital census that Uganda has ever held as enumerators for the first time used tablets to fill the information.
It was also the 11th census to be conducted in Uganda, with first one in 1911 and sixth post-independence and had five sets of questionnaires for households, institutions, accommodation facilities like hotels, floating population and community.
Challenges
Mukiza said there were a number of hard-to-reach areas including islands, mountainous areas that made it difficult for enumerators to carry out their job.
“There was failure to access some households in gated communities, unavailability of respondents, especially single person households, refusals to be counted by some religious cults especially in Busoga region and the geography of some areas which was not updated on the system,” Dr.Mukiza revealed.
He said internal border conflicts like the Apaa land conflict between Amuru and Adjumani, Palaro between Gulu local government and Amuru among others, especially in Northern Uganda.
“We had failed to penetrate Apaa until we got some lady, Winnie Ochaya who volunteered to be a coordinator. We tried to send UPDF to protect but failed until this lady came and counted 100%.”
The census commissioner applauded UPDF, Police, Uganda Prisons, Internal Security Organization and Electoral Commission for their active participation in form of provision of enumerators and vehicles to transport materials.
He said UBOS is now going to undertake post enumeration survey to check the quality of the census data but also do further data analysis and publication of final census results in September.
While commenting on the results, President Museveni said the results of the 2024 national population census have greatly shown NRM’s ideology on the development of the country.
Museveni said that when NRM had just come to power, there were efforts by the west to introduce a number of ideas including birth control methods which he dismissed.
“We had problems with some groups which wanted to castrate people that they are controlling population growth. We told them look, the problem was medical and social economic,” Museveni said.
“The NRM told you that deal with the social economic base of society and the rest will come up more easily and it is how we introduced universal immunization so that children don’t die, maternal mortality has come down, life expectancy has gone up.”
The president joked that at the age of 26 as he mobilized colleagues to go the bush to fight, he was being referred to as ‘mzeeyi’ since he looked older that anybody during the rebellion that brought him to power in 1986.
“The people I was recruiting looked at me as being very old. This has now changed. When we started, the life expectancy was 43 years which meant we needed to produce more people. If people die early, you need more but now life expectancy has gone up to 63 and people are joining the money economy, they are not giving birth to many children.” The President boosted.
“Food production depended more on hand hoe and (children) as labour force. It meant the more children one had, the more food they grew. This has changed. Now the food you eat you don’t grow, but need money to buy it. Now the analogy of too many mouths to feed is no longer a challenge.” He said.
According to the president, since life has improved, Ugandans no longer want to give birth to many children because this means they will have to dip into their pockets to feed them, noting that this was the original idea that the NRM suggested to the West in order to oppose their birth control idea.
Museveni explained that this is a natural way to control the birth rate of the country, other than those so called scientific methods of using drugs.
He added that improving medical system and introduction of universal education have also proved a point in improving the status of the population.
“This census is going to prove many things. It proves what we have been telling you is wright.”