Since independence in 1966, Botswana has successfully conducted decennial censuses from 1971 through 2011. The country’s political stability and economic resilience have been supportive of the census exercise and the results which have not had any major shortcomings.  In a significant move within the context of regional integration, the Southern African Development Community (SADC) decided to harmonize the census process of its member states from the 2000 round of censuses. Botswana has responded positively, from the 2001 census and beyond to this regional requirement. The 2001 census, being the country’s fourth census since independence was the first in the edition of the SADC-wide rounds of censuses.

Statistics Botswana in collaboration with, and support from the United Nations Fund for Population Activities (UNFPA), embarked on the development of a comprehensive Census Project Document (CPD) that will guide the 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) undertaking.

The PHC being a project, requires that a CPD be developed to provide a guide on what is to be done to make the project successful. It has been a tradition to develop CPD for censuses since 1981 to present. The CPD is intended to define what census is and spell out processes and procedures of conducting a census with a breakdown of activities by different components of the census cycle.  It goes further to present the total estimated budget broken down into major components or milestone by financial years from 2018/19 to 2022/23.  

The census project document is also an important instrument to use in resource mobilization, advocacy for the 2021 PHC, as well as, providing guidance on stakeholder roles and participation on the project. 

This document has taken into consideration key issues and challenges experienced during the 2011 census, as well as, recommendations thereof.  Mitigation of these issues will be used as input in planning for the 2021 census processes.  It goes further to provide different strategic areas as census implementation guide and the required technical assistance.  Capacity building shall be to the cornerstone of the success of this project and so, the census staff will be capacitated through benchmarking and attending relevant courses and training workshops on the 2020 round of censuses.