ICTs have many goals, including the reduction of time needed to collect and process data. The project, in this form, gives the State more flexibility in how it uses collected data.

Seychelles will start its first nationwide digital census on April 22, 2022. It will collect data on its population, households, and voters, said on April 5 the deputy director-general of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), Helena Butler-Payette. Unlike previous years where the census was done using forms to be filled, this year it will be fully digital. 

“One of the biggest changes in the way we do things resides in the digitalization of census,” said Butler-Payette while adding that training sessions, for about 500 door-to-door surveying agents, have already started. 

Since it became independent, Seychelles has carried out six census operations; the first two in 1977 and 1987. The following censuses (1994, 1997, 2002, and 2010) focused on meeting national needs, especially the delineation of administrative borders. According to the NBS, Seychelles had 99,728 residents in 2021, 0.8% more than the figure recorded in 2020. This year’s census should have taken place in 2020 (it takes place every 10 years) but it was postponed to 2022 due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

In addition to data on the population and households, agents deployed will also gather voters’ data. Commenting on the operation, Helena Butler-Payette said it is better to use the same resources now to carry out the two surveys instead of wasting money doing both separately. Overall, the government plans to spend 904,000$ on the operation.

The NBS believes that conducting the survey digitally would allow results to be obtained more rapidly. “Before, it took us nearly a year to draw reports from the data we collected during the census, but this time, it will take us only weeks or months,” the NBS official declared.

Ruben Tchounyabe