African Statistical Yearbook 2010

This Yearbook is a result of the combined efforts of three leading African regional organizations to set up a joint data collection mechanism for socioeconomic information on African countries, as well as a common harmonized database. The joint African Statistical Yearbook aims to break with past practices, whereby each regional/subregional organization published their own statistical data on African countries. This ineffi cient method of working led to duplication of efforts, a suboptimal use of scarce resources, an increased burden on individual countries, and the sending of mixed messages to users involved in tracking development efforts on the continent. It is expected that the joint collection and sharing of data between regional institutions will promote a wider use of country data, reduce costs and signifi cantly improve the quality of the data, leading to better monitoring of development initiatives on the continent.