Security Desk - The importance of census data for Sudan
Pennsylvania, USA - As our country gears up for the most important census in recent memory “some would even say that it is the most important census ever conducted” the stakes couldn't be higher.
This census will play an important role in upcoming election as well as the referendum and will decide how the constituencies will be demarcated. Any student of politics will tell you that demarcating election districts is as important as determining who will wield the power. Census data will be useful in a variety of ways and can be used mostly for good as well as evil. It also determines what part of the country receives most shares of development monies. In my daily lab works, I come face to face with the power of census data and how it has played a role in the economic development of the United States. If there is anything Americans are very good at, it is their ability to maintain an extensive data of every variable from poverty to pollution. To say the least, it is mind-boggling!
South or Sudan in general does not have a highly developed database anywhere comparable to what America has. Recently a friend of mine from Gezira in Sudan ran into me while I was working on my Geographical Information System (GIS) lab dealing with mapping the spread of West Nile virus East of Mississippi River and he was amazed.
He told me that I could probably be one of only a handful of people in Sudan with this background. My initial reaction was to dismiss his comment as a flattery. After all, Northerners are known for that. But he was serious.
He told me how his friend who graduated from the Khartoum University and now working for the Khartoum state government was tasked with making sense of survey data so as to help with land distribution. Land in Khartoum has become a hot commodity, and it has become a headache too because the Khartoum state never imagined a time will come when this will be the case. It never anticipated that petrodollars pouring into the state will create the demand for land on which to build factories, roadways, supermarket, public parks, golf courses, homes, etcetera. He was given a budget and told to hire his own team to make sense of data. And be quick about it too. It was challenging because his background as a civil engineer was not sufficient to solve the task at hand. He had to identify the equipments needed and among those were remote sensing equipments that can only be found in the West and other developed countries. But he was smart enough to contract an American subsidiary firm in UAE to help track down some remotely sensed satellite images of the greater Khartoum region.
Sure enough, the Americans had what he needed. He quickly created a database of coordinates delineating parcels of land and soon enough, he had the data he needed to help the state government. If any customer comes to Khartoum state looking for a piece of land, all he has to do is query his database and all prospective plots are there. "I'm rich now and makes over $75K," he proudly said. I was nodding my head and I couldn't help taking a good lesson from his narrative. Not necessarily that the potentials for tapping into this lucrative field are attractive; but the fact that we are really helpless when it comes to what to do with data. I have taken my readers on a long detour just to illustrate the importance of data. In short, Sudan is way behind in critical areas that are at the forefront of any development agenda.
South is even still in pre-stone age when it comes to utilizing data to help deal with social issues ranging from water distribution to severity of famine. The problem is that there ought to be a real collection of data on households. Dr. Luka Biong Deng (2003) wrote a very informative paper on education in South Sudan in which he highlighted some impressive data that was collected by the UNICEF and to some extent, Southern Sudan Centre for Census, Statistics and Evaluation (SSCCSE). The power of census data could be used to address social issues such as education by determining the enrollment, and why there is a gender gap in education. Identifying a problem and addressing it is the best way to move forward. Laying a solid foundation today will be helpful in the future because we can always add to what we already have and understand important trends. The upcoming census will be a good foundation for household data.
After laboriously collecting census data on everything from household size to wealth, South will suddenly realize that it has some serious information that could transform it into an efficient region. But the real question will be turning that data into something that a lay person can digest without causing constipation. This data will be of little use if we really don't have the map of Southern Sudan in its entirety in place. For data to make any sense there has to be a backdrop against which it is understood. This means that we have to have maps of states, localities such as payams and counties, and the all encompassing map of Southern Sudan. Combining all these and comparing household data from all these regions will give Government of Southern Sudan (GoSS) planners a clear picture on how to allocate resources. It is a challenging task but the rewards will be worth resources spent to come up with this crucial information. The government will know which regions are lightly populated, lack access to clean water, have high infant mortality rate, lack health facilities, schools, food, and so and so forth. Having identified these areas, the planners can come up with creative solutions that will have real impact in the lives of citizens. In short, the government will play a good role of providing public goods much more efficiently. This data can be utilized by relief agencies to help with their work.
As illustrated above, the potentials are endless. Acquisition, organization, and manipulation of census data are critical for any government. Even the lowest level of government needs to know how to initiate zoning so that it can guide the growth of its city. For instance, a town like Bor would need to be divided into zones and each will then be developed creatively. In this article, I have taken a generalized approach towards pointing out the importance of upcoming census data. It is not only important for elections and gerrymandering of constituencies but it has real implications for the trajectory that our development effort will assume. It is therefore critical that this exercise is done right and with utmost care and determination. The data we collect today will form the basis of how we interpret future data. So far our government is seemingly not following the right path that is necessary for utilization of this data. Seemingly, our government is attempting to climb the tree from the top. It is an exercise in futility to say the least. Any effort must start with clear demarcation of north-south border. From there, we can map out the South from counties to states so that we can understand where a particular data is coming from. That way, we know where to allocate what amount of resources and study more in depth why certain areas are the way the data say they are. It is not an easy endeavor but the benefits are worth the effort.
*Mariar Wuoi writes a column for The New Sudan Vision, tagged Security Desk. He is a B.S. Energy and Environmental Economics, Geographic Information Systems student at Penn State University, U.S.A.
