Niamey — ECA/SRO-WA) - A delegation from the West African Economic and Monetary Union (WAEMU) Commission, conducted by Mr. Bakary Sacko, Chief Statistician of the Statistics Centre of this institution, led a mission to the Sub-Regional Office for West Africa of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA/SRO-WA). This mission is part of the cooperation framework between the two organisations on the production of statistical data.
The objective of this mission was to discuss all currently ongoing activities and identify those to be undertaken in 2016, for which joint implementation actions of both institutions are necessary.
Thus, a working session was held with Mr. Dimitri Sanga, Director of the ECA/SRO-WA and his collaborators, during which Mr. Sacko summarized the activities achieved and presented those planned for the Regional Statistical Programme (RSP) for 2016. He expressed "desire that ECA/SRO-WA would analyse the possibility of integrating certain aspects of these activities in its annual programme".
Among already realized achievements, Mr. Sacko listed: the support of ECA to UEMOA in the framework of the development of the African Social Development Index (ASDI) and the African Gender and Development Index (AGDI) and their participation in the workshop on civil registration and the adaptation of the database. Concerning support for the database, the adaptation of ECA's StatBase to the needs of the UEMOA makes it possible to develop a single unified database for this West African regional integration institution. Thus, the product "UEMOA StatBase", generated from data available at the Statistics Centre, will be accessible online. It will allow the interested public to consult and conduct research on socio-economic indicators by sector, country as well as by year.
Continuous testing and training for the officials of the Statistics Centre are underway to allow for adequate functionality of the database. This training can also be extended to national experts of member states in order to facilitate building the database from national sources. The ultimate objective is to develop the ECA database for West Africa and the production of country profiles for the sub-region.
Regarding the activities of the RSP for 2016, he underlined the assistance provided by UNCTAD for the implementation of the plan of action for the development of statistics on international trade and services, workshops to exchange experiences on developing thematic yearbooks, the execution of the 1-2-3 Survey, as well as the integrated survey on household living conditions in collaboration with the World Bank.
On his part, Mr. Dimitri Sanga, praised the exemplary cooperation between ECA and UEMOA. He is deeply satisfied with the implementation of ECA-UEMOA's joint actions. Mr. Sanga highlighted in particular the 1-2-3 Survey and the workshops to exchange experiences on the development of thematic and statistical yearbooks, which will permit the development of a UEMOA statistical yearbook. The cooperation will further focus on updating national accounts and the harmonisation of reference years for survey data.
At the end of this mission, UEMOA and ECA developed an action plan for their joint interventions that the two organisations are going to undertake in the short and medium term.
It should be further mentioned that the mission also made a courtesy visit to the Resident Representative of UEMOA in Niger, Mr. Serigne Mbacke Sougou in the presence of, Mr. Dimitri Sanga. At the end of this visit, the two delegations unanimously expressed their positive assessment of the cooperation between UEMOA and ECA. Lastly, they decided to present the progress achieved before a subsequent session of UEMOA's decision-making body.
