Senior Researcher Dr Sarchil Qader and Specialist GIS Technician Dr Aubrey Steingraber have recently returned from Cameroon where they conducted an 8-day workshop and high-level engagement to support the development of a national sampling frame for the country.
The lack of an up-to-date national sampling frame that accurately lists the businesses and household addresses needed to successfully carry out surveys has created a significant obstacle for the country’s development. This is especially pressing as Cameroon’s National Institute for Statistics prepares for upcoming socioeconomic and health surveys. The newly inaugurated UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) funded Data for Development project is allowing WorldPop to assist countries like Cameroon tackle this and other data deficit issues.
Key workshop objectives were to strengthen the capacity of staff at Cameroon’s National Institute of Statistics (INS) and National Institute of Cartography (NIC). Workshop participants improved their understanding and use of the preEA Tool package and acquired a variety of geospatial analysis skills using the open-source QGIS application.
By the end of the workshop, the WorldPop team and INS staff had co-developed methods to generate urban, rural and refugee strata boundaries and generate a national sampling frame for the entire country. Participants were also trained in using geospatial tools to support them in validating preEA boundaries and collecting GPS household locations in the field.
The trainers have a perfect mastery of their subject and help trainees to keep up with the pace of the training.
The trainers made every effort for us to learn as much as possible and gave us research leads to go further.
Dr Qader and Dr Steingraber also met with the INS leadership, including the Director General, Mr Joseph TEDOU. Potential areas of continuing collaboration between the INS and WorldPop were discussed, including support with the upcoming agricultural census and designing a customised approach to deliver vitamins. A bilateral meeting was also held with staff from the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI) about potential applications for demographic data in recent deforestation and land use/land cover change in Africa, particularly in Cameroon and the DRC.
WorldPop are currently planning to return to Cameroon later this year to further support the population estimation model co-developed with INS.
