Census 2024 Preliminary Results: What You Need to Know

President Yoweri Museveni received the preliminary results of the National Population and Housing Census 2024.

The President received the results at a function held at Kampala Serena Hotel. President Museveni congratulated the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) for conducting a successful exercise.

“I also congratulate Ugandans for listening to our advice and embracing our programmes, and you can see things are beginning to work out,” he said.

He also noted that although the census figures are still preliminary, they show the correctness of the National Resistance Movement (NRM) strategy.

“You remember we had problems with some groups that wanted to castrate people, claiming they were controlling the population, but the NRM told you that the problem of big families is medical and socio-economic. That is what we told you, but people didn’t want to listen, although we insisted on what we said,” President Museveni asserted.

“When they were advocating for birth control injections and other measures, we said this is not the problem. The problem was, first of all, medical: have a reliable medical service so that people know that even if they have one child, he will not die unless there’s an accident. This psychological issue of having many children will be addressed. The NRM told you to deal with the socio-economic base of society, and the rest will come more easily. That is how we introduced universal immunisation so that children don’t die. Life expectancy has gone to 63 years, and people are joining the money economy.”

The President further appealed to Ugandans to completely get rid of all old superstitions about counting children and other beliefs, thinking that it will bring bad luck. According to President Museveni, things have changed, and what people used to think was witchcraft is now scientifically explained.

“You need to change the organic structure of society and start pushing for new ideas, not simply saying have fewer children. Even the belief that we don’t want to be counted is part of that problem since our people believed that when you count children, they will die,” he urged.

The Minister of State for Planning, Amos Lugoloobi, thanked President Museveni for successfully championing the National Digital Census.

“We thank you, Your Excellency, for approving and funding the digital census, and we pray that the government embraces the idea of digitising service delivery across government to get real-time results. From this experience, we know we can collect real-time data as programmes and projects are conducted across the country,” Lugoloobi stressed.

“The census results will go a long way in speaking about the performance of National Development Plan III that is ending soon. We will continue to prove to the people of Uganda that indeed it matters to be counted.”

Dr. Albert Byamugisha, Chairperson of the UBOS Board of Directors, said the census exercise was successfully conducted due to the positive contribution of all Ugandans who accepted to be enumerated.

“The product we are receiving today has been enabled by each one of us in one way or another. For instance, the government, under the able leadership of Your Excellency, prioritised the census exercise and allocated sufficient resources for its successful implementation,” Dr. Byamugisha noted.

“Your Excellency, you further rallied all Ugandans to participate, and they listened to your call. We received cooperation from the citizens during the enumeration exercise. In fact, Ugandans were vigilant and involved their local council leaders to ensure they were enumerated,” he added.

The Executive Director of UBOS, Dr. Chris Mukiza, informed the President that the bureau had 135,230 field workers, 14,669 enumeration supervisors, and 4,715 sub-county/division supervisors with five sets of questionnaires.

Dr. Mukiza also revealed that after the enumeration exercise, they established that Uganda now has a population of 45,935,046 people, up from 34.6 million counted in 2014.

“This represents an increase of 11.3 million in the last ten years, including 780,061 refugees,” he said.

“We faced various challenges, including hard-to-reach areas, failure to access some households, refusals by some religious cults, and deliberate refusals of households in gated communities. There were also internal border conflicts like in Apaa, Ombechi, and Nyamisingiri, among others. Additionally, there were unavailable respondents like single-person households that leave early and come back late. Some areas' geography was also not updated on the system.”

Dr. Mukiza also encouraged the government, private sector, and all leaders to use the census data to plan and improve the livelihood of Ugandans.

The 2024 National Population and Housing Census was conducted electronically from May 9-19, 2024, with a mopping-up exercise until May 26, 2024, to ensure complete coverage in the Greater Kampala Metropolitan Area and hard-to-reach districts.