Malawi is to conduct its fifth census next year since independence at a cost of 16 million dollars, the United Nations Population Fund Agency (UNFPA) said on Monday.
"Malawi is due for its fifth post-independence census to determine the total number of people and other socio-demographic indicators," Boniface Kalanda, UNFPA's assistant resident representative in Malawi, told AFP.
Malawi, one of the countries worst-hit by the AIDS pandemic, conducted its last head count in 1998 when the recorded population was 9.8 million.
The country's population is now estimated at 12 million, three times the number established in the first census in 1966, two years after independence from Britain.
Malawi, which has around 14 percent of its population infected with the AIDS virus, had an annual population growth of 1.9 percent in 1998, according to UNFPA.
The AIDS pandemic has cut life expectancy in Malawi to 36.
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