Population and Housing Census 2012

The 2012 Population and Housing Census (PHC) for United Republic of Tanzania was carried out on the 26th August, 2012. This was the fifth Census after the Union of Tanganyika and Zanzibar in 1964. Other Censuses were carried out in 1967, 1978, 1988 and 2002. The 2012 PHC, like others, will contribute to the improvement of quality of life of Tanzanians through the provision of current and reliable data for development planning, policy formulation and services delivery as well as for monitoring and evaluating national and international development frameworks.

The information collected for the 2012 PHC will be used in monitoring and evaluating the Development Vision 2025 for Tanzania Mainland and Zanzibar Development Vision 2020, Five Year Development Plan 2011/12 - 2015/16, National Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (NSGRP), commonly known as MKUKUTA, and Zanzibar Strategy for Growth and Reduction of Poverty (ZSGRP), commonly known as MKUZA. The census will also provide information for the evaluation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2015. The Poverty Monitoring Master Plan, which is the monitoring tool for NSGRP and ZSGRP, mapped out core indicators for poverty monitoring against the sequence of surveys, with the 2012 Census being one of them. Several of these core indicators for poverty monitoring will be measured directly from the 2012 Census. The census will also provide a denominator for the determination of other indicators such as enrolment and literacy rates, infant and maternal mortality rates, unemployment rate and others.