The funding for the national population census, scheduled to take place next year, is short by more than US$8 million, the National Institute of Statistics Rwanda (NISR), has announced.

According to Prosper Mutijima, the Census Coordinator at NISR, the total budget is set at US$21.3 million but only US$12.5 million is available.

He added that the Ministry of Finance would soon organise a meeting with development partners to see how the funds could be raised.

"About US$8.8 million needs to be mobilised,” Mutijuma noted.

Preparatory activities for the census have been going on since August 2010 with the main activity scheduled for August 2012.

"The census is a set of operations including the pre-enumeration operations which involves preparatory activities, census mapping and pilot census. The other operations are the enumeration (the census itself) and post-enumeration operations (post-census survey, data processing, data analysis, publication and dissemination of results),” Mutijima said.

He noted that the activities that began in August 2010 will end in December 2014. However, the enumeration will start on August 16, 2012 and end on August 30, 2012.
"During the enumeration period, more than 18,000 people will be employed as field staff, mainly teachers and students on vacation,” he said

The first population census in Rwanda was held in 1978. By then, the Rwandan population was at about 4.8 million people.

The next census was conducted in 1991 which put the population at 7.1 million. The population growth rate between 1978 and 1991 was 3.1 percent.

The third population census was carried out in 2002 and indicated that the population was 8.1 million people implying a fall in the population growth rate of 1.2 percent.

"This extremely low rate of 1.2 percent is due to the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi that claimed more than a million lives,” Mutijima said.

Generally, the population of Rwanda has been growing at an average annual rate of 2.2 percent.

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