10 May 2022

Botswana's population is increasing at a decreasing rate, says statistician general, Dr Burton Mguni.

  Announcing the 2022 population and housing census preliminary results in Gaborone yesterday, he said population growth rate stood at 1.4 per cent, a decline from the 1.9 per cent recorded in the 2011 census.

He said the growth rate followed previous downward trends from 4.7 per cent recorded in 1971, 3.5 per cent in 1981 and 2.4 per cent in 1991.

“The average household size is estimated at 3.3 persons per household which is a 0.4 point drop from the 3.7 persons per household in 2011,” said Dr Mguni.

   He said the estimated population stood at 2 346 179, four per cent lower than the projected 2 446 263.

 The estimated population represented a 15.9 per cent increase over the 2011 census count of 2 024 904, he said.

  According to Dr Mguni, the 2022 census registered many firsts as it was the first Statistics Botswana undertook as a body corporate. 

He said it was the first to utilise digital technology for both cartography and count in order to enhance the quality of data and reduce turnaround time for releasing results.

It was also the first census to have been conducted earlier than August and the first to have been executed during a pandemic, being COVID-19, he said.

Said  Dr Mguni; “All of these firsts presented opportunities and challenges and one of the challenges was the slow start of the project in some districts and lower than expected enumeration pace in others.”

He said slow start to counting was experienced in some census districts due to data collection challenges as well as shortage of enumerators and transport resulting in the exercise not being completed as planned.

Dr Mguni noted that the challenges resulted in a four-day extension of the enumeration period.

At the end of the extended period, there were still pockets of households that had not been counted in some areas, particularly in Kweneng East and Gaborone, he said.

He said a mop-up exercise  had to be undertaken to cover communities where enumeration was still outstanding.

The exercise was eventually concluded on April 26, said Dr Mguni. BOPA