Major developments and issues in population and housing censuses in Africa : 1990 round

Abstract

One of the essential features of modern population and housing censuses is "defined periodicity- to ensure availability of time series of data which will not only describe the current situation but also enable the appraisal of the past and estimation of the future size and characteristics of the population of a country. There is therefore a general international recommendation that a national census be undertaken at least once in ten years with a rider that circumstances may make it necessary for some countries to conduct their censuses more frequently. Further, in recognition of the value of regional and international comparability of results of censuses, it has been suggested that countess may consider taking their censuses in the years ending in "0" or as close as possible to those years.