Zim population now at 15 million: Census results show

Zimbabwe’s population has grown by 16.2 percent to 15 178 979 from 13.1 million in 2012, preliminary results of the 2022 national housing and population census release on Tuesday show, raising serious challenges to companies as demand for will remain low for a longtime.
The Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency (Zimstat) conducted the census from 21 to 30 April this year.

Announcing the provisional results, Zimstat director general Taguma Mahonde, said females continued to be the dominant gender.

“The population of Zimbabwe as at 20th April 2022 was 15 178 979, of which 7 289 558 (48 percent) were male and 7 889 421 (52 percent) were female, giving a sex ratio of 92 males for every 100 females,” he said.

“Given the 2012 population size of 13 061 329, this gives an annual population growth rate of 1.5 percent. The population constituted 3 818 992 households, giving an average of 4 persons per household. Given a land area of 390,757 square kilometres, the resultant population density
stood at 39 persons per square kilometer.”

Mahonde said the rural population continued to outweigh that of urban centres, as 61.4 percent of the population resides in rural areas while urbanites constituted 38.6 percent.
In 2012, the rural population was 67 percent while urbanites constituted 33 percent of the national population.

Provinces with the highest population include Harare, which has 16 percent of the total population, followed by Manicaland East and Mashonaland West provinces with 13.4 and 12.5 percent respectively.

“The distribution of the population by province for the year 2022 indicates that Harare Province had 2 427 209 persons, Manicaland and Mashonaland West Provinces had 2 037 762 and 1 893 578 persons respectively. In all provinces, the female population was higher than the male population,” he said. Harare also led in terms of the number of households.

“The distribution of households shows that Harare Province had 653 562 households followed by Manicaland and Mashonaland West Provinces with 502 945 and 466 843 respectively. Masvingo Province had the highest average household size of 4.17 followed by Matabeleland North Province with 4.15.”

Mahonde said despite several challenges encountered in preparing for the census, it had gone without any glitch.

“The advent of Covid-19 in 2020 interrupted the mapping exercise and supply chains which were critical components of the preparatory phase of the census. Zimstat lost ten months of reparatory work as we complied with Covid-19 lockdown restrictions. However, through availing of more
resources by the government and exceptional commitment by Team Zimstat, the 21st April 2022 timeline was met comfortably,” he said.