“Strengthening population censuses and national accounts to support Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063”

Welcome

Chairman’s Statement on the 13th ASSD


All roads will be leading to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, on the 1st week of October as the African statistical community, statistical development partners and international partners gather once again to shape the future of Africa’s statistical development.

To take this forward, we shall continue to recount our gains so far in the statistical trajectory. When we met in Tunisia in 2016 we introduced economic statistics as a burning area to inform how we can collectively improve the status of our national accounts in the continent. However, due to the challenges facing ourselves as countries, we could not hold the ASSD 2017.

It is our responsibility as member states to ensure that in Africa, quality, timely, and comparable economic statistics critical for the continent’s agenda of regional integration, structural economic transformation, and sustainable development are availed. The role of economic statistics and national accounts, in particular, is to capture the production, exchange, expenditure, consumption, and accumulation, by and among, various economic actors. We need accurate and timely data to support the formulation of macroeconomic policy, monitor and analyse macroeconomic trends, assess the sustainability and inclusiveness of economic growth and also support evidence-based decision making.

A few African countries have undertaken their censuses in the 2020 Round, with noted challenges and successes for some, whilst a majority still to embark on the journey. It is for this purpose that the 2020 Round of Population and Housing Censuses discussion is high on the agenda. This will afford countries an opportunity share their positive and negative experiences for all of us to deliberate and adopt mechanisms of assisting each other to ensure that the 2020 Round is a success.

I therefore extend an invitation to all of you to gather at the United Nations Conference Centre in Addis Ababa Ethiopia on the 01st to 2nd October 2018 for the 13th ASSD. The 13th ASSD will be held back to back with the Statistical Commission for Africa (Stat-Com Africa) and Forum for African Statistical Development (FASDEV). At the centre of the ASSD discussions will be national accounts and the 2020 Round under the theme “Strengthening population censuses and national accounts to support Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063”.

This auspicious event will be hosted by the Government of Ethiopia through the Central Statistics Agency led by the Director General, Mr Biratu Yigezu. Preparatory work with the support of the ASSD Secretariat, the African Union Commission and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, the host country and other partners is in full swing.

I am looking forward to see you all in Ethiopia.

Mr Risenga Maluleke: Chairman, Africa Symposia on Statistical Development (ASSD)

All queries about the 13th ASSD are to be forwarded to the ASSD Secretariat for the attention of Ms Nwabisa Maya, nwabisam@statssa.gov.za and Mr Mahlomola Lefupana, mahlomolal@statssa.gov.za

ASSD in brief

The Africa Symposia on Statistical Development in Brief

The Africa Symposium on Statistical Development is a forum created to address a concern by African statisticians in a gathering in Yaoundé, Cameroon in the year 2005. Taking place against a background of poor performance of African countries in undertaking population census previously and a report that painted an unimpressive picture of the continent’s state of readiness for the 2010 Round of Population and Housing Censuses, it was decided that something needed to be done to improve the situation going forward. A fortification meeting was subsequently held in Cape Town in 2006 which ushered in the ASSD as a standing platform with an initial objective of mobilising all African countries to ensure that they carried out censuses in the 2010 round covering the period 2005–2014. The Yaoundé meeting was held in the wake of a report by the United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan to the General Assembly in September 2005 that showed glaring data gaps in monitoring progress made in Africa on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The main resolution of the first ASSD meeting in Cape Town was the call to Africa’s National Statistics Offices to re-enforce the need for the African statistical community to meet on an annual basis to engage actively in the ongoing revision of the Principles and Recommendations on Population and Housing Censuses (PHCs) to share best practices in the planning and management, execution, processing, analysis and dissemination of census data. Amplifying and complementing this resolution was the decision of the 39th Session of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) Conference of Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development held in Ouagadougou in May 2006 that assistance should be provided to countries emerging out of conflict. Furthermore, governments were called upon to make resources available for successful census taking. In carrying out these resolutions, the ASSD became an important platform for the African statistical community in its desire to realise unprecedented statistical development efforts on the continent. Five ASSDs were subsequently held in Kigali (Rwanda), Accra (Ghana), Luanda (Angola), Dakar (Senegal) and Cairo (Egypt). The Ministers responsible for CRVS in Africa in their first conference held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in August 2010 implored African statisticians to address yet another problem bedevilling the continent: CRVS.

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The Thirteenth Africa Symposium on Statistical Development

“Strengthening population censuses and national accounts to support Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063”

CONCEPT NOTE AND CALL FOR PAPERS

  1. Introduction and background

The Africa Symposium on Statistical Development (ASSD) is an annual forum to bring the statistical community in Africa together to tackle strategic challenges confronting the African Statistics System. As decided at the 11th ASSD in Libreville, Gabon in 2015, economic statistics and in particular national accounts were adopted as the focus for the next five ASSDs covering 2016-2020.

The 12th ASSD was held in Tunis, Tunisia in 2016 with the theme of “Strengthening basic economic statistics for the compilation of national accounts in Africa.” It marked the beginning of the economic statistics round of symposia and served as an advocacy platform to raise awareness among policy makers and the African statistical community on the importance and challenges of compiling basic economic statistics in Africa. It also served as a monitoring platform to inform the achievement and progress on the African Programme on the Acceleration and Improvement of CRVS (APAI-CRVS) and the 2020 Round of Population and Housing Censuses.

The ASSD, led by Statistics South Africa as its Secretariat, hosted by the Central Statistics Agency of Ethiopia, and supported by ECA, AfDB, UNFPA and AUC will be holding its 13th event on 1-2 October 2018 in United Nations Conference Centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The theme for this year’s ASSD will be “Strengthening population censuses and national accounts to support Agenda 2030 and Agenda 2063.”

The System of National Accounts (SNA) serves as a guiding principle and systematic framework for economic statistics and provides a powerful foundation and database for planning, realisation, monitoring, and reporting of 2030 Agenda and Agenda 2063. The roles that SNA can play towards the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) will become even more significant once it is extended to include environmental issues, such as in the case of the environmentally extended supply-use tables (EE-SUTs). There have been many activities and much progress at the regional and country level. It is time to leverage and scale up the efforts.

The resolution for the 2020 round of census, adopted by the Economic and Social Council in June 2015, recognized the increasing importance of the 2020 round of population and housing censuses for meeting the data needs of the SDGs as well as other national and international commitments. It urges countries to conduct at least one population and housing census under the 2020 World Population and Housing Census Programme, during the period from 2015 to 2024, taking into account international and regional recommendations.

Successfully implementing both of the above will help produce sets of statistics that are essential sources to inform properly a large number of SDG indicators.

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NOTE CONCEPTUELLE ET APPEL A COMMUNICATIONS

  1. Introduction et contexte

Le Symposium Africain sur le Développement de la Statistique (ASSD) est un forum annuel visant à rassembler la communauté statistique Africaine afin de relever les défis stratégiques auxquels les systèmes statistiques africains sont confrontés. Comme décidé lors de 11ème édition du Symposium à Libreville, au Gabon en 2015, les statistiques économiques et en particulier les comptes nationaux ont été adoptées comme sujet focal pour les cinq prochains ASSD couvrant la période 2016-2020.

Le 12ème ASSD s’est tenu à Tunis en 2016 sur le thème “Renforcement des statistiques économiques de base pour l’élaboration des comptes nationaux en Afrique”. Il a marqué le début de la série de symposiums sur les statistiques économiques et a servi de plateforme de sensibilisation parmi les décideurs et la communauté statistique africaine sur l’importance et les défis de production des statistiques économiques de base en Afrique. Il a également servi de plate-forme pour rendre compte de la réalisation et des progrès du Programme Accéléré pour l’Amélioration de l’Eta-Civil en Afrique (APAI-CRVS) et de la série des recensements de la population et de l’habitat de 2020.

Sous la direction de Statistics South Africa et le patronage de l’Agence Centrale des Statistiques de l’Ethiopie, avec l’appui de la CEA, de la BAD, du FNUAP et de la CUA, le 13ème Symposium sur le développement de la statistique se réunira les 1er et 2 octobre 2018 au Centre de conférence des Nations Unies à Addis-Abeba, Ethiopie. Le thème de cette année est “ Renforcer les recensements de population et les comptes nationaux à l’appui de l’Agenda 2030 et de l’Agenda 2063“.

Le Système de comptabilité nationale (SCN) sert de principe directeur et de cadre systématique pour les statistiques économiques et fournit une base solide à la planification, la réalisation du Programme 2030 et de l’Agenda 2063, ainsi qu’au suivi et à l’établissement de rapports d’avancement. La contribution que le système de comptabilité nationale peut apporter à la réalisation des objectifs de développement durable (ODD) s’accroit d’autant plus les comptes économiques sont étendus aux questions environnementales, comme dans le cas des tableaux des ressources et des emplois étendus à l’environnement (TRE-EE). Des activités et progrès ont déjà été réalisés tant au niveau continental que national sur les comptes tant économiques qu’environnementaux, et il convient d’en tirer et d’intensifier les efforts pour plus de progrès.

La résolution pour la série des recensements de la population et de l’habitat de 2020, adoptée par le Conseil Economique et Social en juin 2015, a reconnu l’importance croissante de ces recensements quant à leur capacité à répondre aux besoins de données des ODD et des autres engagements nationaux et internationaux. Elle exhorte les pays à réaliser au moins un recensement de la population et de l’habitat dans le cadre du Programme Mondial des Recensements de la Population et de l’Habitat de 2020 qui couvre la période 2015-2024, en tenant compte des recommandations internationales et régionales.

La réussite des initiatives développement dans ces deux domaines statistiques ci-dessus contribuera à produire des ensembles de statistiques qui représentent des sources d’informations essentielles à un grand nombre d’indicateurs des ODD.

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