November 18 is African Statistics Day. It is celebrated every year to increase public awareness over the important role that statistics play in all aspects of social and economic life in Africa.
The annual celebration this year focuses on data quality, which is an essential tool for monitoring the achievement of national development plan and international development goals, mainly poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSP), regional integration and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Hence, with ECA refocusing its statistical function towards data quality and following wide consultations with countries, therefore the theme for this year's celebrations has been decided to be "Quality Data to support African Progress". This theme was chosen to draw attention to the importance of quality statistics for evidence decision making in economic management, poverty reduction, and in all aspect of socio-economic development processes. It also provides an opportunity to advocate supporting for major statistical operations, including censuses and surveys.
Quality Statistics required for better development outcomes
Quality statistics are required to monitor goals and completion point of PRSP, for instance unreliable data may falsely allow a country to reach the eligibility requirements for a debt relief or access the membership to a monetary zone, On other hand, unreliable data subsequently destabilize the zone when the real figure is revealed. Insufficient accessibility due to confidentiality also creates delayed policy responses, during financial and economic crisis, despite the availability of leading economic indicators, in alarming levels, compiled somewhere, however not given enough attention. Typically, quality statistics may be used for planning, for forecasting and for crises prevention, leading economic and social indicators may predict in advance if the different ratio of deficits, debt services and growths are in alarming levels. Unreliable, delayed and poor quality statistics affect African countries in different ways, including lack of capacity to design adjustment measure on time to reach the completion point, inadequate capacity to mitigate the risk of devaluation, and sometimes, drastic austerity measures are taken and over adjustment may even sink the economy and exacerbated the poverty rates. Therefore, reliable and timely statistics are required across social and economic areas, allowing, for instance the social planner to systematically adjust the number of schools, the hospital and infrastructure consistent with population and economic growth. This type of statistics provides an unbiased basis for evidence-based policy formulation and decision-making.
Challenges of Producing Quality Data in Africa
While progress has been made by many African countries to improve their quality of statistics, including compliance with international standards, methodological soundness and accessibility, a lot still needs to be done to improve timeliness, dissemination and credibility. The prevailing practice and resource constraints does not guarantee the independence, integrity and accountability of the national statistical systems in Africa, in some cases the compilation of statistics suffers from political pressures to obstruct the methodology and schedule of releases of statistics. Moreover the quality of primary data sources represents a serious challenge, namely the data collection from national agency custodians of administrative records and the heavy response burden of surveys and censuses. The challenges of conducting censuses and surveys are mainly budget constraints, low response rate and delays in data release due to insufficient skilled staff for data processing. The specific challenges for administrative records consist of the existence of legal frameworks, their poor quality in terms of low coverage and using mixed concepts i.e. fiscal and business accounting concepts, their primary objective is not intended for statistical purposes, financial and monetary data are also highly confidential; consequently, there is a limited access to such records. These constraints in legal frameworks and low response rate represent serious obstacle for the production of quality statistics in Africa. Addressing such challenges requires institutional change, including revision of statistical acts and related laws and improved coordination towards full functional national statistical system.
African Efforts to improve Quality of Statistics
To address the challenges of producing quality statistics, the core activities of ECA, AfDB and the AUC emphasize on changing the way of statistics are collected and analyzed, through the implementation of the NSDS, the ratification of the African Charter on Statistics and the strategy on the harmonization of statistics in Africa (ShaSa), in addition to the regular activities related to the implementation of international standards build around the 2008 SNA and related manuals such as balance of Payment and Government finance statistics (GFSM). The implementation of NSDS will improve the collaboration and coordination between users and producers of data within the statistical systems, while the compliance to international standards will improve comparability and harmonization of data. Guidelines and Handbooks were designed to mainstream the African Charter for Statistics in the NSDS, in order to make significant and sustainable improvements in the quality of statistics in Africa, especially in the areas accuracy, timeliness and accessibility. The joint implementation programme for RRSF/NSDS has identified a set of strategies for achieving its objectives including improved processing and compilation techniques, systematic access, use and improvement of the quality of administrative records.
