Ghana's Census

September 26th was census night in Ghana, and there were signs all over town but I had no idea what that ment until Monday night when a census worker came to the house and asked me the census questions.

When the worker started to ask the questions he wanted to know who in the house had spent the "census night" in the house. So now I understood what the census night ment.

The questions were very interesting, some were the same as we get on our census but then there were other questions that I don't remember being on our census. Here are some of the questions that they asked: the literacy those 11 years or older, educational characteristics of persons 3 years or older who had formal schooling, economic activity of persons 5 years or older, if you are disabled, how many children were born alive in the last 12 months, what the house is made of, if you own or rent the house, number of rooms in the house, number of sleeping rooms, main source of lighting, what you cook with, how you get your water for drinking and water for other domestic purposes, if you have a kitchen, a bathroom, a toliet, how you get rid of your trash, if you have a mobile phone, a land line or have access to the internet.

It was interesting that the question about economic activity of persons 5 years or older. They wanted to know if any individual is working for at least 1 hour during the 7 days prior to the census night even if he/she is going to school. They wanted to know the kind of work even if the child did not get directly paid. I am hoping that this is to get children to stop working and go to school but I know that that is not going to happen.

At first I thought that they would not want to interview me since I was not a Ghanian but since I was living in Ghana I got to answer the questions. They had a section with your nationality but they never asked if I had a visa to be there which I thought was a little odd. There was also a question about how many languages you speak. I asked the man to clarify that question and the options were one local language, one local language and English, one local language and French, more than one local language or other. I chose other.

On the whole the experience was interesting. When he finished he thanked me and I walked him to the gate because he was afraid of the dog, Teddy. He was telling me that my interview was one of his shortest at 45 minutes. He said that some of his interviews have taken 5 hours to interview the entire house.

I am glad that they are getting all of this information so they can get a baseline of information about the living conditions of the country and from what the director of census in my town is saying the information is going to be used for something for the World Bank and the UN. I hope that Ghana is going to be able to get something for all of the hard work that the workers have put in to get the information.