Socio demographic profile of districts of KwaZulu-Natal Province - based on the 10 sample of the 2001 South African census data

摘要

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) can assist in using information from census data to investigate questionsudfor national and local government planning purposes, such as socio-economic profiles and needs ofudcommunities. I will be doing this on the data from the Ethiopian census, scheduled for 2006. . As no Ethiopianudgeo-referenced data is available at this stage. I am using the 10% sample of the South African Census 2001 dataudfor KwaZulu-Natal (KZN), as a hypothetical population. KZN was chosen as this provides a setting with urbanudand rural populations, as well as mountainous and flat areas, and so is in some ways similar to Ethiopia.udThe questions to be asked of the Ethiopian census data are of the form:ud· What exists at a specific location or in a specific area? (eg what health facilities are there, what is theudpopulation)?ud· What access does the population have to facilities in the area? Does the road network need to be improvedudto resolve the problem of accessud· Where are groups of people in greatest need of … (eg where are there clusters of people with disabilities,udand are there facilities for them)ud· What are the characteristics of ... (eg female headed households) and what are these related to (eg HIV/AIDSudor migrant labour?)ud· What changes need to be made to infrastructure to increase service to communities in need?udThe results for the hypothetical population show that there are areas with high unemployment rates, low schooludattendance and education levels, high levels of female headed household, and difficulties of access toudeducational and health facilities. Many households do not have toilet facilities, and obtain water from rivers,udwhich could impact on the health of the communities. Migrant workers were investigated to see if these wereudlikely to be migrants from neighbouring countries, or from other provinces. The numbers in the hypotheticaludpopulation in these cases are small, so little can be concluded from this.