Zanzibar’s Best Data

Update October 2017: A lot of links that were on this page were broken when the Office of the Chief Government Statistician (OCGS) changed their website. It’s not the most user-friendly of sites but I’ve trawled through it and tried to replace the links where possible and add a few new ones. There are also some links to the (excellent) openAFRICA website, which had collected the documents through this page before they were taken down from the OCGS site.

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Given journalistic interest in Zanzibar, and my work within the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar’s Planning Commission from 2013 to 2015, I want to share some key data sources.

I’ve been careful to only include documents that are already online. The documents can be confusing, incomplete and/or out of date, but to my knowledge, these are the best publicly available sources of data on Zanzibar and it took me two years to find all of these.

Please ask me on Twitter (@jamiepett) if you have questions about this data or if you think anything is missing.

General

• General profile
• Zanzibar in Figures 2016
• Zanzibar Statistical Abstract 2016

Economy, Demography, Poverty and Education

• Socio-Economic Survey 2014 (GDP, GDP growth, GDP per capita, population) (2013, 2012)
• Census General Report, Summary of Censuses 1967-2002, 2012 Population and Housing Census
• Household Budget Survey (HBS) 2014/15 (wallchart here), HBS 2009/10 (Poverty data)
• Integrated Labour Force Survey (ILFS) 2014, ILFS 2007, (Employment data), Child Labour Survey 2014
• Census of Establishments 2016 (businesses)
• Annual National Accounts 2007-2014 (Detailed GDP data, NB: re-based in 2014)
• Annual Bulletin of Agricultural Statistics 2015
• Consumer Price Index by month
• Tourism statistics by month
• Trade data
• Tanzania National Panel Survey x 4 (2008/09, 2010/11, 2012/13, 2014/15. NB: The poverty headcount here uses a different methodology/poverty line to the Household Budget Survey and so the two results cannot be directly compared)
• 2010-2013 Annual Education Statistics Abstract

National Planning

• Zanzibar Vision 2020 (The overarching long term development plan)
• MKUZA II ( Medium term Economic Growth and Poverty Reduction Strategy 2011-2015) NB: A successor strategy known as MKUZA III is now in place but is not online.
• Zanzibar Growth Strategy 2006-2015 (Outlines key growth sectors)
• MKUZA II Implementation Plan, MKUZA II Monitoring Masterplan (Gives more detail on implementation and monitoring of MKUZA II)

Data sources

• The Office of the Chief Government Statistician (OCGS) (Zanzibar)
• The National Bureau of Statistics (Tanzania)
• The Tanzania Socio-Economic Database (TSED)
• The Zanzibar Planning Commission