No Development without Reliable Gender Statistics

Addis Ababa, 08 July 2008 (ECA) - Generating and collecting gender statistics and building capacity in this area remain a serious lacuna in Africa and impacts negatively on formulating policies and developing activities and programmes to achieve gender equality.

Anxious to address this challenge, ECA's African Center for Gender and Social Development and the African Centre for Statistics launched an international high-level policy dialogue on gender statistics in partnership with The African Development Bank, the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, Makerere Institute of Statistics and InWent German Capacity Building International Agency. The policy dialogue recently held in Kampala, Uganda, gathered participants from the National Statistical Offices (NSOs) in 35 countries, representatives of regional statistical training institutes and over fifteen other organizations including the Human Development Report Office (HDRO) and the Abidjan-based Bureau of the United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM).

Opening the Dialogue on behalf of the Prime Minister of Uganda, the Minister of Gender and Culture emphasized that data and information were indispensable inputs for effective management at all levels, thus setting the tone for the Dialogue which focused on a wide range of issues. Participants discussed ways in which NSOs could assist in generating and disseminating gender statistics.

The Dialogue was also presented with a definition of gender statistics and participants discussed the way gender statistics gathering can be undertaken through on-going surveys. In addition to identifying opportunities for collecting gender statistics, the dialogue reviewed constraints and discussed ways to overcome pending challenges.

ECA/ACGS representatives seized this opportunity to present to the Dialogue the African Gender and Development Index (AGDI), which was welcomed as a useful tool to provide indicators for collection of gender statistics. In the same context, building capacity to collect and generate gender statistics was emphasized as key, especially if countries intended to gather AGDI data.

The Dialogue was also timely and useful as it helped define synergies and partnership between ACGS and ACS as user and provider, with a view to promoting gender statistics and better identifying the needs in data collection and dissemination.

Discussing the way forward, the Dialogue identified several actions to be taken in the short, medium and long terms. In the short term, participants agreed that the major goal should be to influence regional and national statistical programmes so that they become more gender responsive. This would be achieved through initiating dialogue among regional and sub regional organizations, developing and endorsing an African Strategy on Gender Statistics, establishing the Kampala City Group on Gender Statistics and developing a short term Action Plan

Regarding actions envisaged for the medium and long terms, the Dialogue brainstormed on a number of crucial initiatives, namely: i) developing an African Gender Statistics Programme (AGSPRO), building an African Gender Statistical System (AGSYS) and strengthening advocacy for gender mainstreaming at both national and regional levels.

The Kampala High Level Policy Dialogue has surely paved the way to support NSOs in the area of gender statistics. A close follow up on its outcome is needed to help Africa better perform, but also effectively contribute to the global statistical debate and become a convincing player.