Census is voluntary exercise but your civic responsibility

Tonight, all persons within the Republic are set to be counted. Empowered by very recent Statistics Act amendments, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) will roll out an electronic National Housing and Population Census across 47 counties for the first time. Why is it so important and what do citizens need to know about the exercise? Since 1948, there have been six censuses conducted mostly at ten-year intervals. The global practice is thousands of years old and predates the term census derived from the Latin word censere “to estimate.” Ancient rulers in Egypt, China and elsewhere used censuses to calculate how much taxes they could expect to collect.

Up until this week, the management of the National Housing and Population Census has been regulated by the thirteen-year-old Official Statistics Act (2006).