Rwanda - General Census of Population and Housing 2002

Start	End	Cycle
2002-08-16	2002-08-30	N/A
2001-08-16	2001-08-30	Pilot

Face-to-face [f2f]
The 2002 census of Rwanda was sanctioned by the Presidential Decree n° 43/01 of the 26th December 1999, as modified by the Presidential Decree n°28/01 of the 10th November 2000. The third general census of population and housing in Rwanda, was conducted over the entire national territory, from the 16th to the 30th of August 2002 exactly eleven years after the second census which was organised in 1991. Its main objective was to update knowledge on the population of the country especially after the difficult times it had gone through during the war and the genocide of the 1990s.

The census operation entailed an exhaustive count of the resident population in each Cellule, Secteur, District and Province in Rwanda as at the date of the 15th of August 2002. This involved the enumeration without omission or double-counting of every resident and household which had earlier been identified during the census mapping phase.

The Census of August 2002 mobilised some 12000 field enumerators 2500 team leaders and controllers,12 provincial supervisors, 4 regional coordinator, to gather information on every member of each household along with their housing conditions, using a questionnaire which was far more detailed than those of the censuses of 1978 and 1991. The National Census Service is the technical institution which was created to organise the preparation and conduct of the 3rd census and the processing and analyses of the data so collected.

The approaches employed for the conduct of the 3rd Census of Rwanda complied with the norms and procedures internationally prescribed for the 1980-2000 round of censuses. The main field count involved a direct interview between the field enumerator and the respondent, who was usually the head of the household.

The census household questionnaire carried more than 50 questions or variables and on the average, each enumerator completed some 16 of them per day.

Thanks to the size and geographical configuration of the country, its use of one main language and its high population densities, it was relatively easier to carry through the field operations without any major difficulties. The field methods and data collection instruments to be used were first subjected to a pretest through a pilot census which was organised covering a nationally representative sample of the population, exactly one year before the Census count itself - that is from the 16th to the 30th of August 2001.

The lessons learned from this pilot operation enabled the subsequent judicious partitioning of the entire national territory into Enumeration Areas (Eas), thanks to the maps that had been produced during the earlier census mapping phase.

During the field census count, each Enumeration Area was assigned to a field enumerator. Each Team Leader had the task of supervising the daily work of some 5 field enumerators. In turn, he was under the supervision of a census controller at the District level.

The data so collected was properly checked on the field by the supervisors at various levels and then forwarded to the Census Office where it was again submitted to further detailed scrutiny before being classified and then stocked or archived by administrative unit.

In order to ascertain the quality and reliability of the data collected during the 3rd Census in terms of coverage and content, a special quality-check field operation was organised three weeks after the field census count. This Post-enumeration Survey (PES) was conducted from the 23rd of September to the 2nd of October 2002 in strict conformity with the norms relating to sampling (using the updated national sampling frame, drawing a nationally representative sample, selecting a set of variables to be tested for coverage and content errors, etc…). A total of 120 EAs was sampled from 82 Districts. The procedure employed involved a one-stage stratified sample with three main strata: Kigali City, other urban areas and rural areas.

The PES revealed that the overall level of coverage of the 3rd Census was 97% and confirmed the consistency between the approaches and conditions under which the both field operations had been conducted.

The General Census of Population and Housing 2002 was carried out using 2 types of questionnaires:
1. Private household
2. Collective household

In addition to these questionnaires, another questionnaire for collecting information on household agricultural and animal breeding activities was also designed to be administered at the same time in all households during census enumeration.

Name	Abbreviation	Affiliation
National Census Service	SNR	Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning

The Census of August 2002 mobilised some 12000 field enumerators 2500 team leaders and controllers,12 provincial supervisors, 4 regional coordinators.

During the field census count, each Enumeration Area was assigned to a field enumerator. Each Team Leader had the task of supervising the daily work of some 5 field enumerators. In turn, he was under the supervision of a census controller at the District level.

The data so collected was properly checked on the field by the supervisors at various levels and then forwarded to the Census Office where it was again submitted to further detailed scrutiny before being classified and then stocked or archived by administrative unit.