African countries urged to adequately fund statistical devt

Accra, Dec. 7, GNA - African countries have been urged to give a higher priority to the provision of adequate funding for the development of statistics to support evidence based development strategies. A resolution presented at the end of the third African Symposium on statistics and development in Accra on Friday noted that resource allocation for conducting of censuses was extremely important since knowing the size and demography of the population goes a long way to enhance effective development planning.

Professor Ben Kiregyera, Director of the African Centre for Statistics (ACS) of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) said it was pertinent to take into account the acute demand for reliable, timely, accurate and relevant statistics the world over, to manage development results and measure progress.

He said it was important for African countries to ensure that they undertook the census before the end of 2010 to aid development planning agendas.

The Symposium, with participants from 50 African countries was on the theme: "Best Practice and Exchanging Experience: Africa 2010 Round of Population and Housing Censuses" and was aimed at restoring statistical development at the national, sub-regional and regional levels of Africa. Presenting the recommendations of the symposium, Professor Kiregyera said governments should increase advocacy and sensitization of the 2010 round of the population and housing census as well as promote statistical harmonization and development in Africa. He said the 2010 census taking must ensure gender mainstreaming and take cognizance of emerging issues like climate change, conflict situations, migration trends, HIV/AIDS, poverty and life expectancy among others.

Dr. Grace Bediako, Government Statistician, presenting the Accra declaration said African governments must implement the Reference Regional Strategic Framework (RRSF) for statistical building by implementing the National Strategies for the Development of Statistics (NSDS).

She commended the African Development Bank (ADB) and the other donors for their support and appealed to them to follow up on statistical capacity building programmes to assist African countries to strengthen their statistical capacities to support the Millennium Development Goals.

Dr. Bediako called for the re-invigoration of the collaboration between the ADB, the ECA and African Capacity Building Foundation to enhance Statistical development. She urged them to support the statistical training centres on the continent to enhance human resource development and to scale up their adherence to international standards. 07 Dec. 07