Census Over

The National Census exercise was expected to end on Monday evening in most parts of the country where 98 percent of households have been covered.

Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) Director-General Antony Kilele said an extension has been granted only for North and Upper Eastern Kenya.

“In the difficult districts, enumerators may continue to work tomorrow to ensure everyone is covered. These include some parts of north eastern, Upper Rift Valley and Upper Eastern provinces,” he said.

First of all the terrain and mobilisation and we have actually to follow this people and this is actually to get finished by tomorrow. The returns we have got from Turkana, right at the north; Pokot, the Chalbi District which is almost a desert going all the way to the Mandera, Wajir all that side but those are just small pockets of follow up that we are actually doing”

He said it was necessary to extend the period by a day to enable the counting of some of the pastoralist communities who had migrated to neighbouring countries in search of pasture.

Mr Kilele explained that as of 9am on Monday they had covered all parts of the country. Nairobi, Nyanza and Central Provinces recorded the highest number with 99 percent of households followed by eastern province which recorded 98 percent.

Western and Rift Valley recorded 97 percent enumeration with North Eastern Province recording the lowest at 94 percent.

“The next phase is data processing. That part is actually difficult than the enumeration period; we will have to deal with over 12.5 million data forms,” he said exuding confidence that provisional results will be out by December 31.

The Kenya national census that kicked off on Monday night is expected to confirm key economic and social trends that will greatly aid development planning for years to come.

Planning Permanent Secretary Edward Sambili described the process as successful but noted that it had been marked with a few incidences. He said they are hoping to learn from the challenges when they begin consolidating the data from the districts.

“I can say that Kenya is an organised country. I mean for us to do this exercise in such a short with such few hitches is quite commendable.”