Africa needs data revolution to development

The success of the sustainable development agenda calls for 
“data revolution’’ to support Africa’s developmental endeavours at all levels, Ethiopian President, Mulatu Teshome, has said.

 

The president made the remarks at the
opening of the 6th meeting of Statistical Commission for Africa
(StatCom-Africa-VI) in Addis Ababa on Tuesday.

 

Teshome said quality statistical
information was crucial to providing basis for design and implementation
of policies at national, regional, continental and international
levels.

 

The president added that accurate data
would also be used to monitor and to evaluate impacts of policies on
economic growth and social improvements.

 

The Ethiopian leader said “data
revolution promotes technology and innovation at all levels of
statistical processes such as collection, processing, analysis and
dissemination.

 

“National statistical systems are the main sources of such data.”

 

Teshome stressed the need to reposition, adapt and strengthen statistical production processes to meet widening 
and evolving needs of data users.

 

He said it was imperative for the
continent to focus on “the use of technology in this new era of data
revolution to incorporate geospatial data revolution.”

 

He added that Ethiopia was planning to
conduct its 4th population and housing census this year, the country’s
first-ever fully digital census.

 

South Africa’s Statistician-General,
Risenga Maluleke, emphasised the need for Africa to work together in
building statistical capacity to support the continent’s developmental
aspirations.

 

He said technology and the lack of funding could hamper such aspirations but added that such

could not be permanent though may have long lasting effects.

 

“It’s only when we work together that
victory would be certain,” said Maluleke, who also underlined the need
to harmonise statistics on the continent stressed.

 

UN Statistics Division Director, Stefan
Schweinfest, said Africa continent needs data champions to advocate the
importance of statistics for informed policy-making.

 

“Having reliable, accurate and accessible
data will help us meet the 2030 Agenda for sustainable development,” he
said, noting that political leadership is crucial in the whole process.

 

African Development Bank (AfDB)
Statistics Director, Charles Lufumpa said working together as the
African statistical community had been become necessary.

 

Lufumpa said Africa should be able to
meet the ever-increasing demand for data needed to track progress on the
sustainable development goals, and Africa’s 50-year development plan,
dubbed Agenda 2063.

 

Urging greater focus on economic
statistics, the director said lack of political will by some countries
to allocate adequate resources toward regular censuses and surveys risks
diminishing the reliability of national accounts
data over time.

 

The four-day meeting with a theme:
“Enhancing the capacity of the National Statistical Systems to support
policies for Africa’s economic diversification and industrialisation’’
will ends on Thursday.