NE Committee of Experts of the Conference the fifty-fifth session of the Commission “Fostering recovery and transformation in Africa to reduce inequalities and vulnerabilities”

Committee of Experts of the Conference the fifty-fifth session of the Commission “Fostering recovery and transformation in Africa to reduce inequalities and vulnerabilities”

16 March 2023

ECA, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Oliver Chinganya, Director, African Centre for Statistics

During the 55th Session of the Committee of Experts meeting in Addis Ababa, the Director of the Africa Center for Statistics (ACS) of the Economic Commission for Africa, Mr. Oliver Chinganya presented the eighth session report of the Statistical Commission for Africa. The eighth session of the Statistical Commission for Africa was held in 2022 under the theme “Modernizing the data ecosystem in Africa to support regional integration”. The meeting reviewed the current trends and discussed new and Innovative statistical solutions to strengthen the existing data ecosystem in Africa. Several key issues were discussed, including Modernizing the data ecosystem, Capacity building, the 2020 round of Population and Housing Censuses, Civil Registration, Gender statistics, System of National Accounts, Geospatial information and statistics, Big data and data science, and the Young African Statisticians programme, among others.

The meeting was held in tandem with two other related meetings; 1) The Eighth Session of the United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management for Africa (UN-GGIM-Africa) adopted realistic approaches to ensure that systematic and comprehensive frameworks are put in place, along with related policies, resources and systems to make geospatial information technology easily accessible to decision-makers and the community in a coordinated way. The second meeting was the group of Experts of the Conference of African Ministers Responsible for Civil Registration which aimed to review progress in the development of CRVS systems, share innovative practices and strategies and provide policy directives on priority measures and strategies for accelerated improvement of CRVS systems. Additionally, 11 UN side events were held in the margins of the Statistical Commission for Africa meeting.

Mr. Chinganya highlighted that “data is a public good and an asset, we need to invest in data and statistics to support Africa’s industrialization agenda”. Data and information allow us to be able to identify the various components or priorities within the original value chains, to determine the volumes and flows of trades to be able to trace the value additions of each country to provide business opportunities that would enhance it as industrialization in the Africa continental free trade area. Moreover, reliable statistics and analysis boosts the effective implementation of development programmes to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Experts highlighted the importance of modernizing data systems in Africa and its transformation, strengthening the cooperation with Key partners, including the African Union and the African Development Bank, for harmonization of data operations on the continent and exchange best practices and experiences in the field of data, especially the population census data. In addition, they indicated that evidence-based decisions are needed in most African countries; thus, centralized data systems are required to increase access to the wide range of users.

The experts' committee discussions come up with the following recommendations:

For member states

Increase investment in financing data and statistics, particularly the 2020 round of censuses.
Provide ECA with the timely and updated national data to make it available to data users through the accessible data portals, e.g. ECAStats.
Moving from traditional data collection mechanisms to digital ones to provide results in a timely manner.

For ECA

Support countries in mobilizing resources to use innovative methods of collecting data, including the improvement of soft and physical infrastructure;
Collaborate with the African Union Commission to centralize data to enhance the accessibility of surveys and other data sources for researchers;.
Cooperating with the African Union Institute for Statistics in coordinating collection mechanisms data and its processing to improve reporting, monitoring and evaluation;
Facilitate the exchange of best practices and experiences in conducting censuses with countries lagging in the 2020 round of censuses.
Support the capacity building of the knowledge and skills required by members in the field of data statistics;
Conduct a study embracing the opportunity cost of lost opportunities for countries that fail to provide the necessary data to enrich the economic development process;.
Conducting a study on the economic value of data availability in the continent.