Sharjah census is part of modern UAE government

On Thursday, Sharjah’s 300 staff began a carefully designed tour of all the homes, buildings and businesses in the emirate to gather some of the most important data the government can get: accurate data on the population they serve.

They’re trying to build an incredibly detailed picture. Household data collected will focus on nationality, number of members, age, qualifications and language. Buildings will be recorded by name, type, and number of floors, among other variables. For businesses, the name, type, activity and number of employees and their nationalities.

All this is for the emirate’s 2022 Sharjah Census in Sharjah, with preliminary findings to be shared with authorities in March 2023. Over the past seven years, the emirate’s government has extracted data from the 2015 census, which recorded 1,405,843 people, of which 12 percent were Emiratis.

Since then, the UAE’s economy has grown, immigration has increased, and a pandemic has hit the world hard. Understanding demographic changes as soon as possible means governments have the best chance of serving the people.

Census has been helping leaders for thousands of years, especially in the Middle East. The first recorded event occurred in what is now Iraq under Babylonian rule some 6,000 years ago. This is just one of the many ways in which the Empire has made remarkable progress in its era.

Unfortunately, the region’s most recent census collection history is incomplete. A modern Iraq has been absent for decades, and one planned for 2020 has been delayed due to the pandemic. Sometimes, up-to-date data is intentionally missing. In Lebanon’s census, politics is organized along partisan lines, and religious lines could be destabilizing if significant demographic shifts are found from the last survey, conducted in 1932.

There are extraordinary success stories. Egypt, the most populous country in the Arab world, is held every ten years. It provides the government with data to help plan for the most central challenge the country is likely to face in the years ahead, namely a rapidly growing and increasingly younger population.

Still, the lack of accurate data remains a real obstacle for too many governments in the region. The United Nations Population Fund recommends that countries take a census every 10 years, describing it as “one of the most complex and large-scale activities a country can undertake in peacetime”. It is no surprise that countries in the midst of wars, economic crises and widespread corruption struggles can do this.

Sharjah was lucky to finish second in seven years. In recent years, the UAE has invested more broadly in creating smarter government services and operations to make life easier for residents and prepare the country for the rapid growth expected in the coming years.

Data will be the key to that. While it may be used to inform very modern policy, it is still possible because of the hard physical work of the foragers that went into effect yesterday and will continue to exist for some time. They should be congratulated for accomplishing one of the most important tasks the government has to accomplish.

Published: October 21, 2022 3:00 AM