The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) has entered into partnerships with Obwen’engo bwa Bugwe and Tieng Adhola cultural institutions to strengthen the collection and use of data at community level.
The partnerships, formalised through memoranda of understanding (MoU) signed at Statistics House, are expected to give the two cultural institutions better evidence for planning while strengthening Uganda’s wider statistical system.
Under the agreements, the cultural institutions will work with UBOS to collect, organise and share administrative information generated within their communities, including data on births, deaths, migration and other population characteristics.
The partnerships come as UBOS seeks to bridge the gap between information generated at grassroots level and official statistics used to guide government planning and resource allocation.
UBOS executive director Dr Chris Mukiza said cultural institutions already generate substantial amounts of information through their day-to-day activities, but the partnership would help transform such information into reliable statistics for development.
“You produce a lot of statistics without knowing, and that statistics is for development purposes. So we want to cooperate with you in order to modernise the statistics you produce,” Mukiza said.
For Tieng Adhola, the partnership will provide a structured mechanism for collecting information from the grassroots and using it to identify communities and areas requiring greater attention.
Tieng Adhola premier Josel R. Obbo said the institution would use its existing leadership structures, including clan leaders, coordinators and officials operating at sub-county, parish and village levels, to support data collection.
“We are going to engage at the grassroots using our system or using our structure, that is the clans, the coordinators we work with closely and the ministers who will be overseeing all this activity,” Obbo said.
He said the information would help the institution identify communities facing the greatest challenges, particularly poverty and violence, and use the evidence to draw the attention of government and development partners.
“There has been a claim that the area where we are is the poorest or among the poorest areas. So that data will help us to know which group or which people, which sub-counties, which areas are most affected,” he said.
The data will also enable the cultural institutions to monitor changes within their populations and make decisions based on evidence rather than estimates.
Representing Obwen’engo bwa Bugwe, deputy premier Charles Wadenya said reliable population information would help the institution better understand its people and address questions that have previously been difficult to establish.
He said Bugwe was interested in collecting information beyond births and deaths because the cultural institution deals with a wide range of issues affecting its people.
“We are also interested in many other things because we deal with many issues that touch our people,” Wadenya said, adding that reliable data would enable the institution to make decisions based on verifiable information.
Mukiza said stronger community-level data would contribute to better national planning by making statistics more timely, reliable and reflective of the realities of different communities.