By Kemo Cham
Sierra Leone’s President Julius Maada Bio has announced December 2025 as date for the next Population and Housing Census to be conducted in the country.
President made the declaration on Monday, September 9, nearly three years after the last census was conducted.
“In line with the decennial Census calendar, I am pleased to announce that my government will conduct a nationwide Population and Housing Census (PHC) in 2025,” the president declared in a scheduled televised address to the nation.
The exercise will be conducted from 2nd to 15th December, he said, designating the night of December 1st, 2025 as Census Night.
The announcement followed the laying of a statutory instrument for the conduct of the census in Parliament for the required 21-day period, which took effect on August 29, according to the statement.
The last census in Sierra Leone was conducted in December 2021, and it was the first ever Mid-Term Population and Housing Census to conducted in the country. But it was mired in controversy, as the opposition boycotted the exercise, citing irregularities in the procedure.
The outcome was also rejected by the opposition, particularly the main opposition All People’s Congress (APC), which move set the stage for the dispute that characterized the 2023 general elections and the ensuing political impasse.
President Bio called for support for the upcoming exercise.
“I urge all our partners and inhabitants of Sierra Leone to support the forthcoming decennial census,” he declared in a post on his social media platform after his televise address.
The 2021 mid-term population and housing census was meant to review the country’s development status since the previous census in 2015, which was itself disputed by Bio’s Sierra Leone People’s Party (SLPP), which was at the time in the opposition.
His government said the mid-term census was meant to rectify wrongs associated with the 2015 census and update the base maps and enumeration areas.
The mid-term census was also meant to prepare the country for this decennial Census.
During his address on Monday night, President Bio said his administration will build on the success of the 2021 Mid-Term census and leverage Computer-Assisted Personal Interviews (CAPI) for the 2025 census.
In line with its mandate, Statistics Sierra Leone will have the general supervision and management in the conduct of the census, he said.
“The data from this decennial Census in 2025 will guide the implementation of various development programmes, primarily the 2024 – 2030 Medium Term National Development Plan and our efforts to achieve the global Sustainable Development Goals. This Census will provide reliable baseline data to assess the impact of critical development interventions on both these guiding instruments with a contemporary deadline of 2030,” Bio said.
This will be the sixth decennial census since Sierra Leone gained independence, starting with 1963, 1974, 1985, 2004, and 2015.
Bio committed his government to providing “considerable” financial and logistical resources to support the exercise, with anticipated collaboration with “our esteemed partners” that include the United Nations Population Fund, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the United States Census Bureau.
