(DRAFT
for discussion)
Representatives
of African countries, African Union (AU), bilateral and international
institutions, UN specialized agencies, African statistical training
centers, and regional and sub-regional organizations attended
the second meeting of the Forum for African Statistical Development
(FASDEV II) from February 09 to 10, 2006 at the UNECA conference
center in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This meeting followed the meeting
of Directors of National Statistical Offices, held from 6 to
8 February 2006.
Recalling
that FASDEV I was endorsed by all the stakeholders of statistical
development in Africa on 13 May 2004,
Recalling
the main objectives of FASDEV to: (i) have an overview of statistical
activities, including assistance, and training in Africa; (ii)
set up a permanent system for the monitoring of statistical
development in Africa; and (iii) strengthen modalities for cooperation
with a view to leveraging on each partner’s comparative advantage,
The
meeting:
a)
Appreciated
the effort made by the African Development Bank (ADB), the Economic
Commission for Africa (ECA), the Partnership In Statistics for
Development in the 21st Century (PARIS21) Secretariat and the World Bank to
organize this second meeting of FASDEV;
b)
Discussed
issues relating to statistical development in Africa:
·
A
draft Reference Regional Strategic Framework for statistical
capacity building in Africa (RRSF);
·
Current
and planned statistical programmes to support and boost the
RRSF implementation;
·
Partners’
support to statistical capacity building in Africa;
The participants:
1.
Endorse the Regional Reference Statistics
Framework for statistical capacity building in Africa (RRSF)
as a guide for African statistical development in the next 10
years;
2.
Noted the progress already made and
reiterate their encouragement to African countries to design
and implement a National Strategy for the Development of Statistics
(NSDS) by 2006 using the PARIS21 Guidelines and following the
recommendations of CODI II, the MAPS, the Yaoundé Declaration
on Statistical Development in Africa and the RRSF;
3.
Urge all stakeholders to ensure
that the development of sectoral statistics is integrated into
the NSDS;
4.
Encourage Member States to finance
the implementation of their NSDS within the national budget
and exhort Development Partners to align their support with
the priorities of the Government as stated in the NSDS;
5.
Call on governments to use their
NSDS as a framework for coordinating and streamlining financial
support, and to exercise restraint in accepting projects that
are not within the NSDS;
6.
Acknowledge the commitment of the
AU to make statistics more visible within its commission by
the creation of a statistics unit;
7.
Urge the African Union to provide
critical political support in the coordination of statistical
development in the region, and ensure that regional initiatives
such as NEPAD have a statistics component;
8.
Commend the African Development Bank
(ADB) for its efforts in statistical capacity building and request
the Bank to continue and increase them;
9.
Commend the World Bank for its Accelerated
Data Programme and calls upon countries to support this initiative
and other donors to contribute to the funding of surveys and
censuses;
10. Commend PARIS21 for the initiative
taken to produce a light report on funding of statistical activities
in the region and the NSDS progress report, and invite the Partnership
to continue updating the information;
11. Commend all other partners for their
continuous support to statistical development in Africa;
12. Urge the ECA to play an active role
in the mobilization of resources for the 2010 round of population
censuses (2005-2014) in Africa;
13. Call upon the ECA and the ADB to
agree on the overall coordination mechanism of the RRSF by end
March 2006;
14. Ask ECA to convene the next FASDEV
meeting preferably in February 2007;
15. Call on all stakeholders to support
FASDEV activities.
The sponsors of the draft RRSF commit themselves to amend
it according to the participants’ comments and distribute officially
the amended version by end of March 2006.
