The Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS) has released the preliminary 2024 National Census results, indicating that Uganda’s population now stands at 45,935,046, up from 34.6 million in 2014.
This marks an increase of 11.3 million over the past decade and includes 780,061 refugees.
UBOS Executive Director Dr Chris Mukiza, speaking at the release of the results, said the results show that 22.5 million are males and 23.4 million are females.
Children aged 0–17 years make up 50.5% of the population while youths aged 18–30 years constitute 22.7%. Older persons aged 60 and above account for 5.0%. The working-age population (14-64 years) stands at 55.6%.
In terms of urban population, Kampala remains the most populous city, with a daily population of 627,340 visitors and 1,875,834 residents. Other significant urban centers include Mbarara, with 63,318 visitors and 261,656 residents, and Gulu, which has 91,165 visitors and 232,723 residents.
The average household size is 4.4 persons down from 4.7 in the previous census with a growth rate of 2.9%. We have 51% females of the total population.
“We are releasing these preliminary census results exactly 31 days after closing of the census. What we promise as UBOS we deliver. This was the 11th census in Uganda, 6th post independence census and the 1st digital census that happened from 10th may – 26th May 2024,” Dr Mukiza said.
“The cost of census was 1.9$ per person, compared to 2.1$ spent in Kenya. We visited 11 million households. Our data is very accurate and robust. We hope the United Nations won’t make noise again [that they have more accurate data than ours[,” he added.
He further explained that UBOS deployed135,230 field workers, 14,669 enumeration supervisors and 4715 subcounty/ division supervisors with 5 sets of questionnaires for Household, Institutions, Accommodation, floating and community questionnaires
On the challenges he said: “We faced various challenges including hard to reach areas, failure to access some households, refusals by some religious cults and deliberate refusals of households in gates, internal border conflicts like in Apaa, Ombechi, Nyamisingiri among others. There were unavailable respondents I.e single person households that leave early and come back late. Also the geography of some areas was not updated on the system.”
“In Mayuge we met a cult called “Njiri Nkaalu” who said they have already been counted by God. Police cracked down some and others deliberately refused to be counted, he added.
President Museveni, who presided over the launch, expressed surprise at the results.
“They were asking very many questions. I took 2 hours responding with maama [Janet] and my people, but the questions were comprehensive, covering all aspects of life. I was thinking that the population is at about 48 or 49 million people, but I was surprised that it is below 46 million people.”