The African Institute for Economic Development and Planning (IDEP) recently hosted a regional workshop on population projections benefiting 16 statisticians from national statistical offices of eight Francophone countries from West, Central and Eastern Africa.
The workshop was organized by the Population Division of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA) in partnership with ECA's African Centre for Statistics (ACS) and IDEP.
The training was a continuation of the workshop on population estimations organized by the same partners in Dakar last September.
The main objective of the workshop was to introduce participants to projection methods and tools and ultimately use the knowledge gained in formulating suitable policies.
Speaking at the close of the workshop IDEP Director, Ms. Karima Bounemra Ben Soltane, reiterated the importance of such training for the African civil servants and experts.
"One of the key challenges for African countries today is how to manage successfully their demographic transition and design socio-economic policies that will provide their sizeable young population with the means to fully contribute to economic growth and benefit from it," said Ms. Ben Soltane.
She said governments will formulate policy actions that are specific to their demographics depending on their capacities to make population projections based on accurate demographic data.
A representative of the trainees expressed participants' satisfaction with the outcome of the training, indicating they were now in a better position to guide decision-making in their respective countries for the formulation of evidence-based policies.
A monthly development seminar on youth employment and the demographic dividend was also organized by IDEP in the framework of the workshop.
The seminar was attended by representatives of the Senegalese government, international institutions and the diplomatic corps, academia and civil society organizations.
The monthly development seminar gave participants the opportunity to discuss practical cases where results of population projections could be used to inform policy development in various sectors to address the challenge of the demographic dividend and exploit the opportunities it can offer.
