Strengthening Statistical Capacity in support of progress towards the internationally agreed development goals in the
SADC region:
ECA’s Potential Contribution
United Nations Economic
Commission for Africa
First Steering Committee Meeting of the SADC
Development Account Project
14-16 July 2006, Durban, South Africa

 ECA Repositioning
 Elements of Programme
 Potential Areas of Contribution
 The Way Forward
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 The project is aimed at strengthening statistical capacity-building in support of the MDGs in the region of the SADC
 Period: 4 years (2006-2009)
 Executing agency: UNSD/DESA
 Co-operating Agencies:
 SADC Secretariat
 Division of Sustainable Development/DESA
 UNECA
 This development account is timely in terms of the revamping of statistical activities at ECA
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 The new Executive Secretary has launched the process of repositioning ECA to better serve
Africa
 The proposed repositioned ECA structure:
 Recognizes the importance of statistics as a cross-cutting issue
 Includes a new entity with financial and administrative autonomy:
STATISTICS AND STATISTICAL CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT
 The new entity will be provided with adequate financial and human resources staff
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 In the framework of the SADC development account project, the ECA should undertake the following activities
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 Promotion, coordination of, and advocacy for statistical activities in Africa and monitoring progress of statistical capacity building
 Building a data hub at ECA for the provision of development data on Africa
 Implementing the 1993 System of National Accounts
(SNA)
 Supporting statistical training programmes
 Establishing a regional programme for population and housing censuses
 Providing technical assistance to African countries
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 Promotion, coordination of, and advocacy for statistical activities in Africa and monitoring progress of statistical capacity building
 Activities:
 To promote the RRSF among SADC countries
 To support countries in the design and implementation of their NSDS (organization, legislative framework)
 To prepare specific advocacy material for SADC countries for the celebration of the African Statistics Day
 Potential partnership:
 PARIS21 on advocacy
 ADB
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 Building a data hub at ECA for the provision of development data on Africa
 Activities:
 facilitate storage and dissemination of statistical information
 Design and establish Websites for SADSC NSOs that do not have one to facilitate dissemination of data and increase visibility
 Establishing a SADC database on household surveys data to feed the ECA regional household surveys database
 Potential partnership:
 AFRISTAT for the Websites (best practice)
 World Bank (Household Surveys database)
 ECE (macro time series database)
 IMF (GDDS, Metadata)
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 Implementing the 1993 System of National
Accounts (SNA)
 Activities:
 To prepare a substantive assessment of the implementation status of the 1993 SNA in SADC countries
 To identify impeding factors
 To organise a workshop for experts to potentially address impeding factors
 To produce a manual on best practices in this region based on experts’ workshop
 Potential partnership:
 ADB (ICP project)
 IMF-EAST AFRITAC (Manuel SNA for SADC countries)
 Afristat
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 Establishing a regional programme for population and housing censuses
 Activities:
 During the Census workshop, to organize workgroups on:
 Effective use of IT and GIS for census operations

Using the census for measuring new and emerging priority issues
 Planning and financing the next censuses
 Analysis, dissemination and utilization of census data
 Identify resources and expertise to be shared, e.g. IT expertise, exchange of professionals, training materials
 Potential partnership:
 UNFPA, UNFPA-CST
 ICP, US Bureau of Census
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 Providing technical assistance to African countries
 Activities:
 Advisory services in the field of collection and dissemination of statistics and databases
 Advisory services in organization and management of NSOS
(ECA has a regional adviser in the area)
 Advisory services in household surveys
 Potential partnership:
 ECA should also contribute in terms of substance and organizational matters in other workshops and activities under this project
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 Development Account on Gender disaggregated data
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