Supporting implementation of Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics in the African region

2.1 National statistical legislation

It is generally agreed internationally that a strong statistical legislation (Statistics Act, decree or proclamation as it is known in some countries) is a fundamental prerequisite for an effective statistical system. Various papers and documents elaborate why sound legislation is crucial to a good statistical system. Almost all countries have a legislation to regulate statistical activities and operations. These legislations vary depending on the form of government, the kind of administrative arrangements in force and legislative and administrative conventions. However, they have commonalities which derive from the Principles.

National statistical legislations build on the Principles and where they predate the Principles, they are being updated to comply with the Principles. It is also worth noting that increasingly, National Statistics Offices which ordinarily enjoy professional independence in line with the Principles are also being given administrative autonomy to, inter alia, enhance the impartiality and credibility of official statistics as well as enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of statistical systems.

A global review of the implementation of these Principles in 2003 undertaken by the UN Statistics Division at the request of the UN Statistical Commission showed, inter alia, that the Principles are widely applied by National Statistics Offices but not so much by other data producers in countries. The challenge, therefore, is to get the Principles known, appreciated and used in government ministries, departments and agencies which also produce official statistics. Various efforts to meet this challenge are presented in the initiatives presented below.

2.2 Statistical training programmes

The need for building statistical capacity in Africa cannot be overstated. There are two important challenges that statistical training has faced in Africa. One, University statistical training has tended to be theoretical, crowding out practical-oriented training. Indeed, official statistics is not yet a mainstream course at Universities. Two, there has been a tendency to teach statistics from the supply side, paying little attention to demand issues. And yet a good statistical system is one where there is a balance between data demand and supply.

Statistical training in Africa is changing with a number of statistical training centres (the Centres) established to teach official statistics covering such subjects as statistical organization and management, statistical legislation, index numbers, industrial statistics, agricultural statistics, health statistics, poverty statistics, conducting censuses and surveys, etc. These Centres play three main roles in the development of the African Statistical System: (a) they provide high level human resources required to manage and sustain the statistical systems, (b) they use or should use live data from data producers for teaching, illustration and research purposes, and (c) they play an important role of developing and promoting appropriate methodologies for data collection and management in countries. The courses on official statistics impart among trainees knowledge of the Principles and related subjects.

Some of the Centres were established and initially supported by development partners but most of them are now government institutions. Examples of these centres whose details can be obtained from their respective web sites include:

The School of Statistics and Planning at Makerere University in Uganda was established in 1969 to provide facilities for high level professional training in statistics and applied economics (official statistics) to meet the human resource needs of Uganda and other English speaking African countries to support the formulation and implementation of national plans for economic and social development. The school offers training at undergraduate and graduate levels in its three departments, namely the Department of Statistical Methods and Actuarial Sciences, the Department of Planning and Applied Statistics, and the Department of Population Studies.

It is also worth emphasizing that the training centres referred to above produce “turnkey” graduates that do not need much orientation when employed unlike University graduates of theoretical-oriented statistics training programmes who not only need a long period of orientation but also training on the job for them to become functional.

2.3 Code of Practice

Increasingly, countries are developing and implementing a Code of Practice applicable to producers of official statistics. The Code of Practice aims to help improve trust and confidence in the quality of official statistics produced across the National Statistical System. It sets out professional and ethical standards applicable to producers of official statistics across the statistical system in the country. Generally, the Code of Practice is anchored in the international benchmarks and best practices including the Principles, the African Charter on Statistics, the IMF Data Quality Assessment Framework, the European Statistics Code of Practice, the UK Code of Practice, etc. In providing for the Code of Practice in Mauritius, the Statistics Act 2000 (Amended) states, “The Director of Statistics shall……with the approval of the Board, publish a CoP for Official Statistics which shall be based on the values of the United Nations Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics and the African Charter on Statistics, and any other internationally accepted principles relating to statistics”.1 In a sense, the Code of Practice also acts as a technical coordinating tool for the National Statistical System. Thus under the section on provisions for the coordination of the NSS, the Namibia Statistics Act (2011) states as follows:

“Code of Practice

In order to establish and maintain public confidence in official and other statistics, the Statistician-General must issue by notice in the Gazette a Code of Practice setting out professional and ethical standards applicable to statistics producers.

In Uganda, a Code of Practice for Official Statistics is one of those documents that have been approved as a Uganda Standard not just by the Board of Directors of the Uganda Bureau of Statistics but also by the Uganda National Bureau of Standards which is a member of the International Organization for Standardization.

2.4 African Charter on Statistics

The Charter is a legal instrument to regulate statistical activities and also to act as a tool for statistical advocacy. It commits African governments to:

use statistics for policy development and management, and for decision-making at all levels,

The charter also commits pan-African institutions to foster statistical coordination by, inter alia, avoiding duplication in African statistical programmes and strengthening the Africa’s statistical system. The Charter builds on and also helps in the implementation of the Principles. It seeks to promote six (6) principles, namely:

Professional independence

The Charter was adopted in 2009 at the highest level by African Heads of State and Government. Member states of African Union were urged to sign and ratify the Charter so that it could be implemented and have its effects at the continental level. They were to commit themselves to accepting and enforcing the objectives and principles enshrined in this Charter in order to reinforce their policies and develop their statistical systems. In particular, they were required to commit themselves to adopting appropriate measures, especially legislative, regulatory and administrative, necessary to ensure that their laws and regulations are in conformity with the Charter.

The Charter came into force on 21st May, 2014 when the required number of countries ratified it. As of December 2016, only 18 African countries had ratified it. The challenges in ratifying the charter relate to lack of familiarity by statisticians with government procedures for ratifying international protocals. A number of countries which have embraced the Charter have used it in various ways including the following:

formulation of national statistical advocacy programmes,

2.5 Strategy for the Harmonization of Statistics

During the 1960s African countries initiated a process of continental integration intended to ultimately provide critical ingredients for economic and social development as well as political stability. For the African integration agenda to fully succeed, it requires not only quality statistical information, but also harmonised data across time and space.

In the past, it was realized by development policy and decision-makers as well as practitioners that deficiencies in statistical information in Africa were hampering Africa’s development and integration processes. In particular, it was realized that although some significant progress had been made in statistical development in Africa due to several initiatives, the progress had been uneven and the African Statistical System2 still faced a number of challenges including the following: a gap between data demand and supply, unsatisfactory quantity and quality of data and their use to foster development and integration, use of international statistical references and standards that do not always take into account African specificities (i.e. the nature of African economies, habits of local populations, etc.), inadequate institutional capacity (values and norms, bureaucracy, performance management and accountability, etc.), low levels of appreciation of the value and importance of statistics across society, inadequate political support, low priority and inadequate funding for statistics, and inadequate coordination of statistical development work. In addition, statistical harmonisation programmes in the Regional Economic Communities3 vary from one region to another and hardly meet the demand for harmonised statistics. And until recently, there was lack of coordination and harmonisation of statistical activities of the continental organizations – the African Union, the African Development Bank Group and the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

In response to concerns raised by stakeholders in the African Statistical System in various forums about the said challenges and weaknesses, a number of initiatives, frameworks and strategies were developed in the last ten years to improve statistics in support of Africa’s development agenda. These include the Strategy for the Harmonization of Statistics in Africa directly responds to these challenges and supports the African integration agenda. SHaSA provides a one-stop document of engagement with policy makers in fostering not only the statistical agenda as well as the integration agenda on the continent but would also help to improve development monitoring.

Like the African Charter on Statistics, SHaSA builds on the Principles and its effective implementation supports the implementation of the Principles in the continent.

2.6 Strategic planning for statistical development

Statistical organizations and systems in Africa are generally weak, under-resourced and under-performing. Therefore countries have been undertaking strategic planning for statistical development to, inter alia, reengineer them to perform better, set long-term objectives for improved performance and prioritize use of limited resources among different activities. This is usually referred to as business process reengineering. In particular, many countries have designed the National Strategy for the Development of Statistics (NSDS). The NSDS is a comprehensive framework for statistical advocacy, assessing and tracking user needs, addressing data limitations including aligning data demand with supply, integrating statistics within national development policy processes and introducing and managing change. It provides a trajectory defining where the National Statistical System as a whole should be in the medium-term and a “road map” and milestones for getting there. The NSDS covers all sectors and users. This is crucial now given that the “data revolution” for Sustainable Development Goals entails increasing the scope, quantity and quality of data from different sources. The NSDS introduces modern and proven management principles in the management of official statistics and it provides a framework for mobilizing and prioritizing use of resources from both national governments and development partners. In the case of development partners, the NSDS presents a framework around which development partners are able to harmonize or align their support to statistics thereby avoiding piecemeal and uncoordinated support that has in the past had limited impact. In essence, the NSDS is a framework for achieving improvements in data as well as both technical coordination (conceptual harmonization) and inter-institutional coordination.

The design of the NSDS is preceded by an in-depth assessment of the NSS. The assessment is based the already mentioned principles and frameworks. Therefore, effective design and implementation of the NSDS directly supports implementation of the Principles in the countries.