Lusaka, Zambia, 5th October 2016/ECA - Experts welcome ECA’s initiative to publish annual country and regional profiles with quarterly updates. Representing national statistical offices, central banks, regional economic communities and other stakeholders, the experts commended ECA’s Country Profile initiative, and called for deeper analysis on social statistics. “There is need to provide space for discussing structural issues in the country profiles as well as deeper analysis of social statistics with more indicators beyond analysis of the business cycle” recommended the meeting.
The two day consultative meeting on “Data Collection and the Compilation of Country and Regional Profiles in Southern Africain Lusaka, Zambia last month commended the drive by ECA to strengthen data collection and the capacity of member states to collect timely statistics through central statistical offices (CSOs). The meeting also called for the development of manuals and guidelines to aid the collection and compilation of timely, reliable and high-quality social statistics for harmonization and comparability.
Speaking during the opening, Director of the Central Statistics Office, Zambia, John Kalumbi, called for investment of CSOs to ensure that statistics were responsive to changing dimensions, and that, statisticians remained abreast with new developments.
Meanwhile, the meeting highlighted the importance of ICT in statistics citing the use of information technology as a powerful tool for data collection. They called upon ECA through African Centre for Statistics to provide technical assistance to enable member States to adopt harmonized international statistical standards at the country-level and to support the Open Data Portal; a vehicle for accessing national data as well as comparing data across the countries.
The two day meeting held on 8 and 9 September 2016, was preceded by the launch of five 2015 Country Profiles.
Over 40 experts from CSOs, Central Banks and Ministries of Finance and Economic Planning from the region, regional economic communities (SADC and COMESA), research and academic organizations, civil society organizations and other development partners attended the meeting. Participants were drawn from 10 countries in the SADC region.