“Counting people should never cost a country its ability to make people count.” These words, first voiced during a 2015 keynote address by South African statistician Pali Lehohla at a UN Data Forum, warned of a dangerous paradox in national planning.
In essence, Lehohla meant that the act of collecting statistics—however important—should not compromise the delivery of essential services that those statistics are meant to improve.
Uganda’s 2024 national census embodied this contradiction. For instance, UGX1.61 billion meant for the Parish Development Model (PDM)—a programme targeting 39 percent of households stuck in subsistence—was diverted to plug funding gaps in the census.
As a result, activities like community data validation, stakeholder training, and monitoring were suspended.
The people were counted, yes – but the programmes designed to uplift them were sidelined in the process.
With nearly UGX400 billion spent – UGX396.59 billion to be exact – the most expensive and expansive statistical exercise in Uganda’s history became both a mirror and a magnifier: reflecting the operational fragility of the country’s statistical system, and amplifying the cascading risks of relying on institutions overstretched by mandates they can barely carry.
The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (Ubos), the designated architect of Uganda’s data infrastructure, found itself at the center of this tension.
And what was meant to be a triumph of data-driven governance instead revealed cracks – some fiscal, some operational, and others disturbingly cultural.
An expensive roadmap to error
The 2024 National Population and Housing Census (NPHC) had a total revised budget of UGX396.592 billion, after receiving an extra UGX147.294 billion in supplementary funding.
To put that into perspective, this was nearly double the cost of the 2014 census, and more than the entire annual budget of some ministries.
It was the most expensive statistical operation Uganda has ever conducted.
Between May 10 and 19, 2024, Ubos mobilized thousands of enumerators and support teams across the country. It was a huge operation. But just months later, on October 3, the Provisional Census Report was recalled.
Why? Because it contained wrong tribal data – taken from the 2014 census and accidentally copied into the new 2024 report.
The mistake forced Ubos to issue a public apology and withdraw the report entirely. It was the first time such a thing had happened in the Bureau’s history.
And it left many wondering: how does a government agency with a UGX396 billion budget make such a serious mistake, especially on such a sensitive issue like ethnicity?
The answer lies in something deeper than a typo. The Auditor General’s report for the year ended June 2024 shows that Ubos was overwhelmed. It was juggling too many big assignments at once—the census, the Parish Development Model (PDM), and several donor-funded programmes.
Many planned activities were delayed, repurposed, or left undone.
Internally, systems were not ready to handle the pressure. For instance, even though Ubos recorded UGX156 billion worth of new assets (like IT equipment and census tools), the process of verifying and organizing these assets wasn’t yet finished.
Many things were still being tracked manually or with outdated systems, which left room for errors to slip through.
Also, in several government departments and districts, statistics committees—meant to help collect and check data—were either inactive or didn’t exist. This made it even harder to catch mistakes before they reached the public.
Ubos did the right thing by acknowledging the error and following the United Nations rules for transparency.
But for many Ugandans, the damage had already been done. This wasn’t just about numbers—it was about trust. People expect official statistics to be accurate, especially when they relate to identity and representation.
In the end, the census may have counted the population—but the error showed that Ubos’s internal systems weren’t fully prepared, despite the massive budget.
The lesson? Throwing more money at a problem doesn’t fix weak systems. That means that without strong checks, coordination, and technology, even the most well-funded project can go wrong.
Where did the money go?
Out of the UGX396.592 billion released for the 2024 census, UGX394.278 billion was reported as spent. But a closer look reveals major cracks in how the money moved—and where it got stuck.
First, UGX4.712 billion in advances sent to districts, cities, and divisions for local census operations remained unaccounted for by the end of the financial year.
That means Ubos had no proof that the money was used properly—or at all. The law gives 60 days to account for such advances, but that deadline came and went.
Second, UGX3.424 billion in payments—meant for enumerators, supervisors, district officials, police, prisons staff, and suppliers—was still unpaid by June 30, 2024.
Altogether, that’s more than UGX8 billion either unaccounted for or sitting unpaid—an amount equal to the full annual development budget for several urban municipalities like Fort Portal or Mbale City.
But this isn’t just about money. It’s about people.
Thousands of temporary census workers travelled long distances, worked long hours – often in remote or underserved areas – only to go home unpaid.
Some didn’t even receive proper communication. Ubos admitted that errors in phone numbers, mismatched names, and incorrect bank details led to payment delays.
These are basic administrative tasks. Getting them wrong at this scale points to something more serious: a broken system beneath the surface.
If Ubos couldn’t reliably process payments to its workforce, it raises a deeper concern—how accurate is the data it collected? And how can the public trust the results of a census built on unpaid, frustrated, or poorly supported workers?
The census counted people. But for many who made it happen, it failed to make them count.
PDM: The collateral damage
Perhaps the most sobering revelation is what Uganda did not do in 2024 because of the census.
UGX1.9 billion was allocated to Ubos for Parish Development Model (PDM) activities, critical for shifting 39% of households from subsistence to the money economy.
The funds were released in full, but UGX1.61 billion (85%) was spent on non-PDM activities, most of it repurposed for the census.
This is the equivalent of transferring a patient’s heart medication to pay for an emergency scan—and forgetting to refill the prescription.
PDM activities shelved included: regional and sub-regional data validation, community stakeholder engagements, data editing and analysis and monitoring and evaluation frameworks.
UEDCL seals UGX 190 billion loan facility from Absa Bank Uganda amid performance probeIn total, four major PDM outputs across 12 detailed activities were either abandoned or postponed, undermining what is arguably Uganda’s most ambitious economic transformation programme since structural adjustment.
The official explanation? The money came late (in June), and priorities had to shift. But this assumes a binary logic—census or PDM—when a functional system should be able to manage both.
And that meant that the institutional cost of the 2024 census went far beyond the budget line.
The collapse of the statistical pipeline
While all eyes were on the population count, at least 15 planned national statistical reports were either delayed, abandoned, or not even started, the Auditor General notes.
These weren’t side projects—they were core outputs meant to inform policy across Uganda’s economic and social sectors.
The numbers tell the story: UGX7.617 billion had been allocated for a crucial Population Projections Report, but none of it was spent.
UGX2.847 billion earmarked for the Post Enumeration Survey (PES)—a standard follow-up to validate census results—also remained untouched.
Reports on vital statistics, labour markets, gender dynamics, culture, health trends, and refugee populations saw zero implementation.
Some of these failures were explained by Ubos as necessary trade-offs—the census had taken priority, and resources were redirected.
But the cost of those decisions is enormous: Uganda now has major data gaps in sectors that desperately need up-to-date evidence.
This isn’t just about missed publications. It means decisions about tourism, employment, healthcare, and social services are now being made without current, credible numbers.
And that means that planners, donors, investors, and policymakers are essentially operating in the dark.
For a country that’s committed on paper to evidence-based governance, this isn’t just a scheduling delay—it’s a step backward. It’s regression disguised as progress.
And without post-census validation through the PES, even the accuracy of the census data itself hangs in the balance.
If Uganda doesn’t close these gaps, it won’t just be the statistical reports that are missing—it will be the trust, planning accuracy, and national direction that go missing too.
Procurement delays added yet another layer of strain to an already overstretched operation.
Procurement delays and donor embarrassment
Out of UGX6.531 billion in planned procurements for the census, UGX1.884 billion—allocated for field vehicles like station wagons and double-cabin pickups—was completely unexecuted by the end of the financial year.
This meant Ubos lacked vital transport support during the enumeration period, especially in hard-to-reach areas.
An additional UGX4.647 billion worth of critical supplies—such as census bags and appointment letters for field staff—were delivered months behind schedule.
For example, printed appointment letters that were meant to be ready in November 2023 were only initiated in April 2024, just weeks before the census.
Similarly, bags meant for enumerators were procured in February, long after the ideal planning window had closed.
The result? Supplies either arrived too late to be useful or forced field teams to improvise, undermining efficiency and coordination in a high-stakes national operation.
Some items meant to support data collection didn’t even serve their purpose—not because of budget constraints, but because the procurement system moved too slowly.
At the same time, donor funding also stumbled. Uganda received UGX13.27 billion in external support from partners, including the World Bank, UN Women, DFID, UNFPA, and UNICEF to support various statistical programmes.
Yet, by year-end, UGX1.505 billion of that money remained unutilized.
That’s over 11% of donor funds sitting idle, even as Ubos was repurposing government funds away from programmes like the Parish Development Model (PDM) to cover census costs.
The audit attributed the unused donor funds largely to the overwhelming focus on the census, which paused or delayed implementation of other activities.
In effect, the census not only disrupted domestic programmes, but also sidelined commitments to development partners.
For agencies accustomed to working with performance-based financing, such underutilization risks eroding confidence—and future support.
Together, the procurement delays and donor fund underutilization reflect a broader issue: money may have been available, but the systems to spend it timely and effectively were not.
One thing quite disturbing isUbos is mandated to coordinate statistics across government, harmonize standards, and avoid duplication.
But the audit revealed widespread absence of functional statistics committees in Ministries, Departments, Agencies (MDAs), and Local Governments.
In short, Ubos is flying solo—trying to standardize a system that’s decentralized, underfunded, and often uninterested.
It is also managing conflicting priorities—donor projects, national programmes like PDM, core statistical reporting, and a 10-year census—all within the same administrative bandwidth. Something was always going to break.
What the census really counted
Uganda’s 2024 census did not only count people but also revealed something more critical: the limits of institutional capacity under the weight of overlapping ambitions.
With over UGX396 billion spent, over UGX8 billion in payment issues, and at least 20 critical reports and programmes delayed, the story here is not just about counting citizens. It’s about counting the cost of a system that cannot yet do many things at once.
Ubos remains a vital institution. But if it is to carry the weight of Uganda’s development agenda, it must be equipped not only with money, but with the planning discipline, accountability systems, and operational agility to use it well.
Because if we lose faith in the numbers, we risk losing our way entirely.
