Rabat, 17 September 2018 (ECA) – The Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the National Institute for Statistics and Applied Economics (INSEA) of Morocco launched today a joint training on agricultural statistics.
Agriculture currently contributes more than 40% of Africa’s GDP and employs more than 70% of its population while current priorities include the Sustainable Development Goals and regional integration through Agenda 2063. “Statistics will [therefore] play a key role as a measurement and control tool to observe countries’ progress towards these goals”, said Lilia Hachem Naas, director of the ECA Office for North Africa in her opening speech.
For a week, about 70 experts, trainers and officials from African national statistical institutes and Ministries of Agriculture will study and share their experiences in the field of agriculture, fisheries and aquaculture, and post-harvest loss statistics.
Some twenty countries benefit from the training including Benin, Burkina, Burundi, Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Comoros, Congo Brazzaville, Congo DRC, Côte d’Ivoire, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, Morocco, Niger, Sao Tome, Senegal, Togo and Tunisia.
The ECA African Center for Statistics is organizing this training in collaboration with the ECA Office for North Africa as part of the UN Global Strategy to improve agricultural and rural statistics-Action Plan for Africa; and in support to the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals in the region.
Note to editors
The Economic Commission for Africa (www.uneca.org) is one of the five regional commissions of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). Its various roles in support to development and structural transformation in Africa include increasing countries’ capacity to produce economic, demographic, social and environmental statistics that can facilitate the design of economic policies adapted to their needs. ECA has embarked on an extensive agricultural statistics programme as part of the UN Global strategyto improveagriculturalandrural statistics.
Previously known as the Training Center for Statistics Engineers (Centre de formation des ingénieurs des travaux de la statistique), INSEA was created in 1961 following an ECA held African statisticians’ meeting held in Rabat in 1960. The first statistical training institute in the region, INSEA has trained African statisticians in a number of areas.
For more information about this training, please contact sarro@un.org.