Strategy for the Implementation of the Addis Ababa Plan of Action for Statistical Development in Africa in the 1990s

CASD News

At its Seventh meeting in May 1997, the Coordinating Committee on African Statistical Development (CASD) decided to establish a Newsletter which would inform CASD members of progress in the implementation of its activities and other statistical developments in the region. The CASD Newsletter wil be published by the Secretariat once every six months.

This is the first edition of the CASD News which the secretariat will publish to compliment the committee’s efforts in coordinating African statistical development. In this edition you will find details on each of the Task Forces which were established at the Seventh CASD meeting and a Progress report on the implementation activities of Task Force number 2, 4 and 5. Two reports on statistical developments in the region are also included, one on Egypt and another on Morroco. For ease of reference, the CASD Terms of Reference have been presented on page 2. All articles received for publication are published in the languages in which they are received. If you have comments and wish to contribute, please write to: The Editor, CASD News, DISD UNECA, P.O Box 3001, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.E-mail: casd.eca@un.org

Contents

Current CASD Members
African Region representatives: ECA member states
Regional training centres participating in the STPA
African and non-African Bilateral and Multilateral Agencies and Donors
CASD Terms of Reference
Establishment of the first CASD Task Forces
Task force 1: Connectivity
Task force 2: Monitoring the implementation of the Addis Ababa Plan
Task force 3: Strengthening of the Statistical Training Programme for Africa (STPA) Centres
Task force 4: Country and regional micro data service units and library, inter alia for poverty and gender monitoring – pilot project
Task force 5: Country live database – pilot project
Progress Report on Task Force 2
Progress Report on Task Forces 4 & 5
Les Nomenclatures Marocaines d’Activités et de Produits
Statistical Development in Egypt

Ecole nationale supérieure de statistique et d’économie appliquée (ENSAE), Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire; Institute of Statistics and Applied Economics (ISAE) Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda.

The Coordinating Committee on African Statistical Development (CASD) was established in 1992 to act as the coordinating body for statistical development activities in Africa.

In that regard, the Committee shall:

• Conduct regular review of the overall progress made by African countries in the implementation of the Addis Ababa Plan of Action for Statistical Development in Africa in the 1990s

• Facilitate, with means at its disposal, the implementation of coordinated actions intended to harmonise statistical systems and methodologies; this implementation will be the primary responsibility of the African national and regional institutions, but should obtain the support of bilateral, and multilateral agencies in so far as these actions are part of agreed work programmes;

• Set up mechanisms for the continuous exchange of information among African governments, national agencies, regional and subregional organizations and all bilateral and multilateral agencies; the CASD secretariat will ensure dissemination of the information to all actors;

• Identify specific themes on which particular and convergent efforts could be made by those actors and consequently propose lines of action to all parties;

• Inform the Conference of African Planners, Statisticians and Population and Information Specialists (PSPI) now replaced by the Committee on Development Information on the progress made on various aspects related to the Addis Ababa Plan of Action;

• Conduct regular evaluation of its own activities.

The first CASD task forces were established by the Coordinating Committee on African Statistical Development in May 1997 in response to a 1996 decision that the activities of CASD must be driven by task forces. Five task forces have been established and have already commenced operations. The task forces are on: (1) Connectivity, (2) Monitoring the implementation of the Addis Ababa Plan of Action, (3) Strengthening of Statistical Training Programme for Africa (STPA) centres, (4) Country and regional micro data service units and library, inter alia for poverty and gender monitoring – pilot project and (5) Country live data base – pilot project. Each task force has clear, specific and time limited objectives. Details in respect of the task forces are provided below:

The objective of this task force is to improve coordination and communication first among CASD members and ultimately national statistical services through introduction of E-mail connectivity. Task force activities will be implemented in three phases. In the first phase an E-mail directory will be prepared for all CASD members and in the second phase E-mail connectivity needs and problems will be surveyed and addressed. During this second phase all CASD members are expected to be connected and an additional 10 member countries connected per year. In the third phase a CASD web-site would be established and physical connectivity established at the rate of 8 countries per year for the remaining countries. The task force is expected to complete its work within two years.

The leader for this task force is the CASD secretariat and associate members are AISI, the World Bank, and DFID (UK) and IPC (US Bureau of the Census).

The objective of this task force is to assess progress and assist in the implementation of the Addis Ababa Plan of Action for Statistical Development in Africa in the 1990s. The expected outputs of the task force are a compendium of statistical activities for each African country and a report on the implementation of the Addis Ababa Plan of Action. The compendium is scheduled to take one year to complete, and the report on the on the implementation of the Plan of Action would be completed six months after the compendium.

The task force leader is the CASD secretariat and associate members are AFRISTAT, Nigeria and IPC (US Bureau of the Census).

The task force objective is to review, over the next twelve months, the most recent evaluations of STPA centres and identify problems which are hampering the successful operation of the centres.

Task force associate members are DFID, EUROSTAT, ENSEA, IPC (Bureau of the Census) and the University of Ibadan. The task force leader is the Institute of Statistics and Applied Economics (ISAE), Uganda.

The task force objective is to assist 2 to 5 pilot countries to establish census and household survey data service centres and a similar regional service centre at ECA. The service centres will include minimum social data sets for monitoring poverty and other social programmes.

Implementation of the task force will be in two phases each lasting one and half years. The first phase will be devoted to developing micro data service units in the countries and in the second phase country specific booklets, and/or electronic publications will be issued to be followed by a workshop to compare research based indicators with a view to identifying common indicators for regional use.

Task force associate members are ECA, AFRISTAT, UNSD, Nigeria, South Africa, IPC (US Bureau of the Census) and statistical directors from 2 to 3 countries. The leader of this task force is the World Bank.

The objective of the task force on live database is to establish country-level live databases containing core macro and sectoral statistical indicators in selected countries with eventual links to a regional database facility. The expected outputs are establishment of the databases in 2-5 pilot countries, an evaluation workshop and a strategy for assisting countries establish live databases. The activities are expected to take two years to implement.

The leader of the task force is the World Bank and the associate members are ECA, AFRISTAT, UNSD, UNICEF, Nigeria, IPC (Bureau of the Census) and directors of national statistical services from 2 to 5 pilot countries.

At the sixth meeting of the Coordinating Committee on African Statistical Development (CASD) which took place in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 8-11 and 13 March 1996 the Committee expressed the need to collect information on statistical activities taking place in African countries. It was agreed that information on the resources available, nature and extent of technical assistance in data collection, data dissemination activities, etc. should be collected in the survey. The CASD secretariat was mandated to collect such information from the Central Statistical Offices of all ECA member States.

A "single activity questionnaire" was designed to collect detailed information for each statistical activity such that the number of questionnaires completed would equal the number of statistical activities being undertaken. Only activities undertaken or to be undertaken during 1997 would be covered in the questionnaire. The questionnaire (in English and French) was mailed out in March 1997 to all African countries.

At the Seventh meeting of CASD which was held in Addis Ababa in May 1997, it was agreed to include the Regional Survey of Statistical Activities, 1997 as one of the activities of CASD Task Force 3. It was also decided to introduce a multiple activity questionnaire as it was feared that the single activity questionnaire was cumbersome, and subject to respondent fatigue. In addition, a mail questionnaire would not guarantee a sufficient response.

The multiple activity questionnaire was drafted by the CASD secretariat with the assistance of AFRISTAT and Nigeria while the United Kingdom Department for International Development (DFID) commented on the draft questionnaire. The questionnaire was mailed out in July 1997 to all ECA member States, requesting them to complete the multiple activity questionnaire if they had not already completed the single activity questionnaire.

A comparison of information being collected by the survey in the single and multiple activity questionnaires shows the following:

Questions on objective, users and type of computers and software used to process and disseminate the results of the survey were left out of the multiple activity questionnaire, the in the interest of space and simplicity. It was however thought that not much would be lost.

Reminders to those countries which had not responded to the survey were sent in July 1997 and November 1997. Other follow-up actions were planned to be undertaken by ECA missions being undertaken to selected Central Statistical Offices of the ECA member States.

At the time of writing this report responses were received from the following 15 African countries representing 28.3% response rate.

It is hoped that the response rate will be increased and that a satisfactory level will be achieved soon. To this end, ECA plans to undertake follow-up activities through missions to those countries which will not have responded by January 1997. This action will assist in increasing the response rate.

Processing and disssemination of results

Processing of the questionnaire is expected to begin early January 1998 and the results of the survey will be published in a "Compendium of African Statistical Activities".

At the seventh meeting of the CASD in May 1997, the World Bank was asked to take the lead in establishing two task force activities to pilot the establishment of micro data service units (Task Force 4) and country live databases (Task Force 5) in a select number of test countries in Africa.

Following the meeting, the World Bank held discussions with a number of interested parties as to how it would be best to proceed. It was then decided that, rather than establish two separate task forces, the most effective way forward would be to draw both activities into a single program. The name given to this program is the Africa Statistical Best Practice Program.

The World Bank is currently initiating discussions with other donors to review the possibilities for funding the proposed program.

The "Africa Statistical Best Practice Program" is proposed as a means of promoting and disseminating new approaches for collecting, storing and disseminating statistical information. It recognizes that, while large-scale support for building country-level statistical capacity is best provided within the framework of individual country programs, there is a need to bring to the African region the many advantages of the information technology revolution.

The Statistical Best Practice Program proposes the establishment of a suitable regional infrastructure for testing and showcasing new technologically appropriate approaches that will help address some of the problems that have hindered the development of permanent sustainable statistical systems in Africa. Under this program, ‘pilot countries’ could be selected and supported to showcase the new approaches (best practices). There could be 2-3 countries piloting each practice. Participating countries may be eligible for a Statistical Best Practice Grant. Part of the grant would be payable directly in cash to the national statistical agency responsible for implementing the pilot, and the rest would be in kind in the form of technical assistance and training.

In addition to the country grants, the program would also finance a limited range of regional activities (to be carried out primarily by ECA, AFRISTAT and the World Bank), to support the implementation of the pilot country programs. These activities would include: supervision, research and development on new products, training, regional workshops for evaluating the pilot experiences and disseminating the results, and support to the activities of the Coordinating Committee for African Statistical Development (CASD). The list of ‘products’ for piloting is not fixed and should grow as new practices appear. Initially, three are proposed. These are:

The purpose of this instrument is 1) to serve as an organizational tool to store and build up time series for key macro and sectoral statistical indicators, and 2) to facilitate access to, and use of, such statistical series by users. Bank and ECA staff are working with National Statistical Offices to help define and set up country-level statistical databases modeled closely on the World Bank’s own Africa Live Data Base (LDB). CLDBs, although copying many ideas from the Africa LDB, are nevertheless distinctly separate products that have to be adapted to specific country needs. They also serve as a means of improving user/producer dialogue at the country level.

The ECA has been closely involved in the development of the CLDB concept. The first pilot country is Mozambique, and inquiries have also been received for Guinea Conakry, Rwanda, and Ethiopia.

This, the most recent product, is intended to improve the dissemination and use of primary statistical data in much the same way that the CLDB is intended to improve the dissemination and use of macro and sectoral statistics. Such a capability is a key prerequisite for improving the impact and relevance of country poverty monitoring programs. The goal is to help establish within National Statistical Offices (NSO) or elsewhere within the national statistical system, a data servicing unit that should become the national repository and disseminator of all survey data, regardless of whether the data was collected by the NSO or not. A key function of the Data Library will be to facilitate and promote poverty monitoring and gender analysis. The Data Library would be responsible for promoting good documentation of the data sets and for establishing dissemination and data access procedures. This ‘product’ draws on the experiences in establishing the Africa Household Survey Data Bank.

Uganda has been identified as a country that would be interested in piloting the setting up of a national survey data bank, and South Africa has also indicated its interest in the program, particularly as an aid to improving the quality of poverty and gender analysis.

The CWIQ is a rapid monitoring tool to measure changes in key social indicators for different population groups - specifically indicators of access, utilization and satisfaction with core social and economic services. This survey instrument was originally designed as a poverty monitoring tool, but its true potential may actually turn out to be for monitoring, with PERs, performance and social outcomes of major country and donor-supported development initiatives. The questionnaire has been collaboratively developed with UNICEF, UNDP and the ILO with the idea of capturing a common core set of indicators that could be supported by each agency . The CWIQ incorporates a number of features, including a very short questionnaire and optical mark recognition (scanning), to shorten turnaround time. It has already been piloted on a small-scale basis in Kenya and Ghana (both of which countries subsequently decided to repeat the exercise as a national survey) and inquiries have been received from Mauritania, Ethiopia, Cape Verde and Zambia.

Conscient du rôle que joue l’information économique dans le développement du pays, le Maroc n’a cessé de déployer des efforts pour se doter d’un dispositif d’informations suffisamment étoffé pour permettre d’entreprendre des travaux de grande envergure dans le domaine de l’analyse économique.

Cependant, la multiplicité des nomenclatures conçues et utilisées par les différentes administrations a limité considérablement la portée de l’information produite.

Pour remédier en partie à cette lacune, la Direction de la Statistique du Secrétariat d’Etat à la Population a élaboré une nomenclature intégrée des activités et des produits s’inscrivant dans la perspective internationale actuelle d’harmonisation des nomenclatures d’activités des différents pays et contribuant à la consolidation du choix d’ouverture internationale du pays.

C’est ainsi que la nomenclature marocaine des activités s’est appuyée sur les révisions des nomenclatures internationales particulièrement celles de l’ONU (Classification Internationale Type par Industrie CITI; révision 3) et de la Communauté Européenne (Nomenclature des Activités Economiques dans les Communautés Européennes : NACE) tout en tenant compte des spécificités de l’économie marocaine. En outre une action de coordination a eu lieu à l’échelle maghrébine en rapprochant le projet marocain des projets algérien et tunisien qui s’inscrivent dans la même démarche d’harmonisation internationale.

La mise en oeuvre des nomenclatures intégrées d’activités et de produits nécessite la mise en application des actions suivantes:

The Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) is the principal and official source for providing statistical data and information at the national, regional and local levels in Egypt.

CAPMAS is doing its best to promote and develop the performance and carrying-out of various statistics, in this respect CAPMAS adopted the most recent and suitable methodologies and techniques in designing, conducting, processing and disseminating different types of statistics.

To achieve this goal CAPMAS has given much attention to:

CAPMAS has conducted in the last few years the following very important censuses and surveys:

CAPMAS has adopted for the first time, the geographic information system (GIS) for use in this census, initially in the urban areas of three governorates in preparation for its generalized use in the next census in all urban areas in all governorates.

Also, for the first time CAPMAS is committed to a very precise timetable for implementing the data processing of the census so that the results are published and released within eighteen months of completion of the field work (before June 1998) as it was planned from the beginning.