According to him, it is crucial to put policies into place based on pertinent facts because doing so will encourage resource management and support sustainable growth.
All metropolitan, municipal, and district assemblies (MMDAs) have been ordered by the Minister of Local Government, Decentralization, and Rural Development, Hon. Dan Botwe, to allocate budgetary funds for building data management capabilities to ensure that the policies and programs they implement are supported by data.
He pointed out once more that since development was largely for the benefit of the population, it was critical for all ministries, departments, and agencies (MDAs) to urge data-driven policies. In today’s national census policy dialogue, which was hosted by the Regional Institute for Population Studies (RIPS) of the University of Ghana, Mr. Botwe made the aforementioned recommendation (June 30).
The National Development Planning Commission (NDPC), the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS), the National Population Council (NPC), and the Ministry of Local Government, Decentralization, and Rural Development all participated in the conversation session, which was organized by RIPS. The discussion, which had as its subject “Census data for effective policy decision making and sustainable development,” was held as part of RIPS’ 50th anniversary celebration. According to forecasts from the Regional Institute for Population Studies, Ghana’s population will reach 38.2 million by 2030.
Given that MMDAs were the fundamental units of planning and development in the nation, Mr. Botwe said that it was crucial to prioritize data investment at that level “to prevent sliding into the trap of guess-work.” According to him, how citizens were given access to pertinent data would determine how much projects or programs affected them. Therefore, he advised the MMDAs to effectively utilize the GSS’s 2021 Population and Housing Census (PHC) data. The conversation on how to use the PHC data, according to NDPC Director-General Kodjo Mensah-Abrampa, was a positive start.
He said the NDPC depended vigorously on the PHC information to get improvement patterns in the different areas and prompt the President on fitting advancement arrangements. As far as it matters for him, the Government Statistician, Professor Samuel K. Anim, said in the repercussions of the PHC, powerful joint effort among improvement and the board organizations on the usage of the information was basic to guarantee maintainable turn of events. He called for cognizant endeavors to be made to review the country’s populace strategies to discover if they were educated by registration information.
“Information should not be sitting in storehouses, so we are working with different organizations to guarantee information interoperability,” he said. The acting Director of RIPS, Prof. Ayaga A. Bawah, said it was vital to focus on registration information since it helped in arrangement arranging, checking, and assessment. “If you are arranging and there is no populace, it is an obscure arrangement,” he said
