Addis Ababa: The eleventh Forum on Statistical Development in Africa (FASDev) kicked off today in Addis Ababa under the theme: “Strengthening the Mobilization of Technical and Financial Resources to Support Innovation in Statistical Development in Africa.”
The meeting aims to foster connections between countries, partners, and institutions that support statistics, in order to address the needs of national statistical systems for technical and financial resources to accelerate the transformation and modernization of these systems.
The meeting will also provide an overview of the challenges faced by countries and identify the needs of national statistical systems to develop and implement transformation and modernization programs.
There will also be discussions on the opportunities and mechanisms offered by institutions, partners, and pan-African organizations to support countries in their statistical development.
In conjunction with these, the Fourth Global Expert Forum for Producers and Users of Disaster-
Related Statistics was also convened. The meetings will last for four days.
The events aim to strengthen Africa’s statistical systems and foster innovation in data collection, analysis, and dissemination, it was indicated.
UNECA’s Africa Center for Statistics Director, Oliver Chinganya emphasized the importance of innovation and capacity building in modernizing African statistical systems.
He stated the role of FASDev in establishing partnerships and promoting the use of advanced technologies like big data and data science.
Over the years, FASDev has established linkages among producers of official statistics, statistics training centers, and partners supporting statistical development on our continent, he noted.
Chinganya called for increased investment in African statistical systems to ensure that they can meet the growing demands for timely, accurate, and reliable data.
The director stressed the need for governments to allocate adequate resources to support statistical activities and to encourage inn
ovation.
The theme of this year’s StatCom “Unleashing the potential of African innovation in statistical development”, resonates with the philosophy of FASDev which is to develop and strengthening capacity of NSOs to modernize and transform their statistical systems, Chinganya mentioned.
Two years ago, he recalled, we gathered here in Addis Ababa to reflect and discuss on “Strengthening and coordinating efforts and support to accelerate the transformation and modernization of national statistical systems in Africa”.
This evidence indicates that the African national statistical systems are moving in the right direction. However, the director stated that there is need to expedite the provision of robust data and statistics to assist the government in accelerating the achievement of the agenda for sustainable development and agenda 2063 through their national development plans.
The African Centre for Statistics at ECA, along with several partners, is prioritizing innovation in its program support for African
National Statistical Systems.
For instance, Centre is supporting member States to fill data gaps with high-frequency and cost-efficient data sources such as administrative data, by supporting the modernization of their administrative data sources for statistical purposes.
It is also assisting countries to harness the opportunities offered by new data sources and technological and digital developments to improve data collection, analysis, dissemination, and use.
This support includes digital censuses; the use of innovative tools and solutions, methods and techniques in collecting, processing, analyzing and disseminating data and statistics to measure national, regional and global development initiatives; integration of statistics and geospatial data; and transformational leadership to enable innovation.
This year, the FASDev programme of work has been prepared to showcase innovation initiatives implemented in countries, and how they successfully mobilize internal and external financial resources to this en
d.
Also, the program of work provides a space to highlight the offers and opportunities, areas of support (technical and financial), and the interests of development partner entities. It also allows discussion on the needs of national statistical systems and partnerships to bridge existing data gaps.
‘Our collective ambition is to make FASDev a cornerstone for transforming and modernizing national statistical systems on the African continent,’ the director concluded.
‘I, therefore, urge the eleventh Meeting of the Forum on Statistical development in Africa to deeply reflect on strengthening synergies among all stakeholders to enhance innovation in the African Statistical System.’
Representatives of member states, stakeholders, partners, among others participated in the forum.
Source: Ethiopian News Agency