ACTIVITIES

The ‘Demography Project’ was established in order to understand the current situation of the demography as a discipline in South Africa and to determine what could be done to enhance this discipline. The demography project was thus coined and it was felt that the Population Association of Southern Africa (PASA) should lead this exercise. The main objective of the ‘Demography Project’ is to highlight the concerns regarding the status quo of demography in South Africa. One of the specific objectives relates to increasing the profile of demography and ensuring that people outside of the discipline know what demography is all about. The intention of the demography project was to put together a document which was supposed to be discussed at the 2013 PASA conference in July. There was a need for the document to be endorsed by all stakeholders. The association appointed Prof. Akim Mturi as the coordinator/ editor of the project. Under his coordination, he organised consultants from different institution and came up with a draft document. In June 2013 the workshop was held to discuss this document, unfortunately the workshop was not that fruitful do to poor attendance and lack of participation of stakeholders. It was therefore, felt that the discussion be postponed indefinitely. The association is planning to have another workshop to finalise the document between May and June 2014.