As Uzbekistan is gearing up to hold its first population and housing census since 1989, the authorities have been able to draw on experiences from Belarus, under a cooperation brokered by UNFPA as part of the “CISPop: Better Data for Better Policies” programme.

Staff at the National Statistical Committee of Belarus assisted counterparts from the State Committee on Statistics in Uzbekistan to prepare key elements of the census process.

The census will be conducted via a combination of online questionnaires and face-to-face interviews.

"With this valuable partnership, Uzbekistan has successfully undertaken crucial enhancements to our census data management system,” said Mr. Berdikulov Kobil, Head of the Census Department of the Statistical Agency of Uzbekistan. “The transformation from manual to computerized census-taking represents a step forward, offering budgetary savings as we adapt to the digital age.”

Uzbekistan’s population increased from 20.6 million in 1991 to an estimated 35.2 million in 2023. The country has seen a significant rise in its total fertility rate, from 2.42 in 2017 to 3.17 in 2021, driven mostly by social and economic transformations resulting in greater confidence in a positive future, according to a recent UNFPA survey.