The Uganda National Bureaus of Statistics has kicked off the national livestock census aimed at collecting data about livestock in the country.
According to Dr. Chris Ndatira Mukiza, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics Executive Director, the census will be carried out in all districts of the country.
“There will be a total count of livestock in all cattle corridor areas whereas the rest of the districts will be covered on a sample enumeration basis,”Mukiza said.
He explained that a total of 32,486 enumeration areas or villages will be covered in the whole country and 23,443 of these will be in the 560 cattle corridor sub-counties while 9,043 are to be sampled and enumerated from the 961 non cattle corridor sub-counties.
“The census will help government obtain data on basic characteristics of livestock, farm infrastructure, farm equipment and machinery as well as providing a benchmark for improving the reliability of current stick statistics,” the UBOS chief said.
He noted that the census will help generate data on all livestock types, breeds, production systems, access to veterinary services, land ownership, tenure system, ownership of livestock by sex and labour used among other variables.
According to UBOS, the exercise to be carried out in conjunction with the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries will see
enumerators pick information from both household based farms as well as private large scale and institutional farms.
“The exercise will be conducted through face to face interviews to be done using a questionnaire that has been designed to capture/list all the information,” Dr. Chris Ndatira Mukiza added.
He said whereas the exercise that kicked off today will run until June, 4, 2021, preliminary results will be released in July and the final results are to be ready in 2022.
