On the Political Economy of Data Collection : Lessons from the Unaccomplished Population Census (DR Congo, 2006-2018)

In 2018, twelve years after a working group began to prepare a population census in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the census project has still not been implemented. We therefore ask, ‘How have different stakeholders shaped the census project since 2006?' The unaccomplished census, as we understand it, is a large project carried out by a complex group of national and international public and private decision-makers. In this document, we try to reconstruct the history of the unaccomplished census. We analyse the project in light of low domestic capacities, a politicisation of the census, unmet funding promises by the government, and fragmented and inconsistent donor activities. The concept of assemblage helps us to explore how the census project was kept together over time and space