[OSGeo Africa] Census Shape Files

[Adi Eyal]

I suspect that in a similar way to how the post office assigns postal
codes, the use of sub-places was designed to help StatsSA assign
enumerators to equal-sized populations rather than helping
statisticians interrogate data or to make it compatible with other
existing datasets. It would be fantastic if all government bodies
agreed on a standard geographical hierarchy so that you could compare
crime statistics using police precincts (the shape files of which are
not publicly available unfortunately) with service delivery data from
the census and political constituencies from the demarcation board.
Perhaps a standardisation body exists?

Adi

On 3 December 2012 09:17, Calle Hedberg <chedberg at telkomsa.net> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> StatsSA's use of this outdated structure is a pain in the butt, actually -
> if you look at almost all other government activities, the logical structure
> would be province->District->municipality (which usually include
> sub-districts in metro areas) -> council ward -> enumeration areas. The
> government's integrated "War on poverty" is for instance largely ward-based,
> and most community outreach activities are ward-based.
>
> If you actually LOOK at the sub-place names, in particular, you find that
> many of them don't relate to local names in actual use.
>
> Regards
> calle
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: africa-bounces at lists.osgeo.org [mailto:africa-bounces at lists.osgeo.org]
> On Behalf Of Adi Eyal
> Sent: 03 December 2012 08:56 AM
> To: Africa local chapter discussions
> Subject: Re: [OSGeo Africa] Census Shape Files
>
> Hi Suzi
>
> The shape files that I uploaded only contain the boundaries for the
> geographical units used in the census. From my understanding the hierarchy
> works something like this
>
> EA (enumeration area)
> SP (sub-place - could be a small village or a suburb) MP (main-place - are
> larger area, small town etc) MN (municipality) DC (district) PR (province)
>
> There hierarchy is better documented on the StatsSA website under the
> 2001 census section.
>
> At the moment, StatsSA has only released partial data from the 2011 census
> to the municipality level. This data is scattered about their website -
> mostly usefully in the PX-Web area
> (http://www.statssa.gov.za/timeseriesdata/pxweb2006/dialog/statfile1.asp)
> but that only contains a handful of variables. You can find other data on
> Maps Alive (http://www.world-data-atlas.com/statssa/) and possibly in other
> places.
>
> In March next year (hopefully) they will release data to the sub-place level
> and at some point they will release a small-area dataset (sub sub-place
> level - basically they will join a bunch of EAs together to form
> small-areas). I'm not sure when that will be and what format it will be
> released in.
>
> I hope that's useful - if someone understands the data and the release
> schedule better, I would be happy to be corrected.
>
> P.S. Note that some of the boundaries have changed since 2001 so you can't
> rely on comparisons using data from the previous census. I'm not certain if
> the 2001 data using the 2011 boundaries has been released or not but I
> haven't been able to find it.
>
> Adi
>
> On 3 December 2012 08:24, Suzi Crossley <suzic at africoast.com> wrote:
>> Is this the actual amounts - I see all the area size and the place
>> name but no figures?  Am I missing this or is it not available?
>>
>>
>>
>> From: africa-bounces at lists.osgeo.org
>> [mailto:africa-bounces at lists.osgeo.org]
>> On Behalf Of Adi Eyal
>> Sent: 01 December 2012 10:29 AM
>>
>>
>> To: Africa local chapter discussions
>> Subject: Re: [OSGeo Africa] Census Shape Files
>>
>>
>>
>> Hi Helene
>>
>> I am in the process of filing a PAIA request to StatsSA precisely
>> because information has not been forthcoming through the appropriate
>> channels. The data available from the website is incomplete. If you
>> have access to a secret datastore then I would be glad if you shared it
> with us.
>>
>> Adi
>>
>> On Dec 1, 2012 9:42 AM, "Hanlie Pretorius"
>> <hanlie.pretorius at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>> Thanks very much for making this available.
>>
>> I have downloaded and looked at all the shapefiles. Excuse my
>> ignorance, but where does one get the actual census data - population
>> counts for example. These are not in the attributes. Can one get other
>> databases to join with the spatial layers? If so, where and how?
>>
>> Thanks
>> Hanlie
>>
>>  > Hi All
>>>
>>> In case anyone is interested. I uploaded the census 2011 shape files
>>> here: http://africaopendata.org/dataset/cen
>>>
>>> Adi
>>>
>>> --
>>> Adi Eyal
>>> Data Specialist
>>> phone: +27 78 014 2469
>>> skype: adieyalcas
>>> linkedin: http://za.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Adi/Eyal
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>
>
>
> --
> Adi Eyal
> Data Specialist
> phone: +27 78 014 2469
> skype: adieyalcas
> linkedin: http://za.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Adi/Eyal
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-- 
Adi Eyal
Data Specialist
phone: +27 78 014 2469
skype: adieyalcas
linkedin: http://za.linkedin.com/pub/dir/Adi/Eyal