Young African statisticians shone at the #UN52SC side event of Young Statisticians of the World.
By Edem Kossi Kludza
This Wednesday 10 March 2021, young statisticians from all over the world organized a side event at the 52nd session of the UN Statistical Commission for the first time on what will be the most important topic in official statistics 30 years from now. The theme was: “What will be the hottest agenda topic at #UN82SC (the United Nations Statistical Commission in 2051)?”
This virtual event was facilitated by the young statisticians from the UN Statistics Division, the UN Economic Commission for Africa and the other four UN Regional Commissions and saw the participation of nearly 350 young people from all over the world. Five country speakers, four from National Statistical Offices, and one from an Ordnance Survey spoke at the event, with Africa being represented by Lesotho.
Young African Statisticians represented 33% of registrants.
A week before the event, Mr. Oliver Chinganya, Director of African Centre for Statistics of ECA, sounded the mobilization of young statisticians, men and women on the continent. These young statisticians responded favourably and shone with their contributions and comments during the event.
Among the five speakers, Africa was represented by the young Ms. Neo Mokakatlela from Lesotho Bureau of Statistics. Regarding the topic, Ms Neo Mokakatlela spoke of the future of employment as one of the main factors that could affect the profession of statisticians in the next 30 years. According to her, discussions in 2051 will be about adjusting to the radical change caused by technological advancement, Artificial Intelligence, and automation and robotics, which may generate a lot of data. She concluded that there was a need to upgrade statistical systems for rapid data collection, to better understand how human resources can be best applied to work with advancing technologies, and to inform policy for appropriate infrastructure. Human reskilling and up skilling will be key to success.
The topics of the other four speakers were:
- Adapting the statistical system for a future with climate change by Mr. Adam Tipper, Statistics New Zealand
- Digi-Tourism by Ms. Muna AL Mazrouei, Federal Competitiveness and Statistics Centre, United Arab Emirates
- Strengthening Statistical Systems through big data by Mr. Panca Dwi Prabawa, Badan Pusat Statistik, Indonesia
- Future trends – The Geospatial Element by Ms. Christin Walter, Ordnance Survey, United Kingdom
A quick survey was launched on what other young people thought about the subject. The main topics were climate change, big data and geospatial information.
During the discussions, the most recurring themes were around data governance, data privacy and big data. Young Statisticians wanted these kinds of platforms to be often given to them to exchange and prepare themselves for current and future challenges in the statistical field.
Responding to this specific concern, Mr. Oliver Chinganya, Director of African Centre for Statistics of ECA, recalled that one of the major decisions of the 7th session of Statistical Commission for Africa was the revitalization of the Young African Statisticians programme aimed at promoting the culture of bringing young statisticians together to talk among themselves and building the capacity to deal with current, emerging and possible issues of the future. Another objective of this programme is to involve young people in decision-making in the statistical field especially young female statisticians on the continent.
To conclude, Mr. Stefan Schweinfest, Director of the UN Statistics Division, thanked the organizers, commended their efforts and the collaboration between various UN entities. He advised that contact should be maintained between the young participants to translate into concrete actions the discussions held during the event.
Young Statisticians were called to join the Global Network of Data Officers and Statisticians on Yammer to continue the discussions.
The recording of the event is available on YouTube.
The presentation of Ms. Neo Mokakatlela is available for download here. Other presentations will be made available on Yammer.
About Ms. Neo Mokakatlela.
NEO MOKAKATLELA
BUREAU OF STATISTICS, LESOTHO
ASSISTANT STATISTICIAN,
NATIONAL ACCOUNTS AND ENTERPRISE STATISTICS SECTION.
As a National Accounts Statistics compiler Neo’s roles include analysis and development of tabulation plan for statistical reports, responsible for data collection, data entry and data cleaning for compilation of National Accounts statistics and Surveys within the Department.
Prior to joining the Bureau of statistics she has worked on several data driven projects, to name a few, she worked at Standard Lesotho Bank on Know Your Customer (KYC) project, where the bank was undergoing massive customer data collection in response to compliance or regulatory requirements where her roles and responsibilities were on document sorting, data capturing and finally storing into KYC database (repository) where it was mapped to existing customer records for future retrieval.
She also worked at the Independent Electoral commission in preparation of elections where her focal point was sorting and displaying voters roll (electors’ data). Neo holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics with Minor in Statistics from the National University of Lesotho.
Education: Bachelor’s Degree in Economics with Minor in statistics.
Language: English and Sesotho