Country Perspective (Ethiopia)
43rd Session of the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC) in New York,
Saturday, 25 February 2012 Saturday,
By
Samia Zekaria
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Statistics for Transparency,
Accountability, and Results
 Statistics provide the evidence needed to improve decision
making, document results, and heighten public
accountability.
 The demand for improved statistics to monitor the
Millennium Development Goals and the parallel effort to
support a culture of results-based management has
stimulated a decade long effort to improve statistics.
 The Busan action plan for statistics came up with a perfect
message as to how governments of each country could be
transparent and accountable for their citizens by using
statistics.
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Main Achievements in Statistics in Africa for
Transparency, Accountability, and Results
Developing Road Map to improve Statistics in Africa
 The Development of the NSDS guideline by P21 has
brought all partners of NSS, policy makers and major data
users on board.
 Advocating for the improvement of statistics among
users, donors, producers and policy makers has created
awareness both at national and international levels.
 In a nut shell, PARIS21 is an effective forum of donors and
development partners and network to promote, influence,
and facilitate statistical capacity development and the
better use of statistics at the national and international
level.
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Main Achievements in Statistics in Africa for
Transparency, Accountability, and Results
 Most SSA countries have developed their NSDS
documents in which they have clearly identified their
gaps and their priorities for the plan period.
 Almost all countries have carried out/ will carry out
the 2010 round PHC in Africa except Somalia
 The 2005 and 2011 round ICP has contributed a lot in
building the statistical capacity of NSOs in Africa.
 Countries strive to align donors’ support with their
strategy in a coordinated manner whenever it is
possible based on NSDS guideline .
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Implementing NSDS in Ethiopia - improving
Statistics for Transparency, Accountability and
Results
 There are a number of areas where the CSA is engaged in improving its data
quality and timeliness by introducing new technologies with technical and
financial support of development partners.
 Through establishing standards for statistical work in the country, the CSA
came up with data quality assurance procedures and designed capacity building
programs for the NSS partners through recently adopted Ethiopian Data
Quality Assessment Framework (EDQAF).
 The effort in standardizing concepts and classifications in producing good
statistics by all NSS and the attempts to harmonize statistical data through
question bank is also the area of CSA’s emphasis in the plan period.
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Implementing NSDS in Ethiopia - improving
Statistics for Transparency, Accountability and
Results
 In order to align with the country’s 5 year Growth and
Transformation Plan, the plan period of NSDS has been
extended by one more year until 2015.
 So far no proper evaluation has been carried out, but
tremendous efforts have been made to implement and
achieve the targeted milestone in the past two and half
years.
 Mid- term Evaluation has been planned to be carried
out towards third quarter of 2012. Based on the outcome
of the evaluation the next round NSDS is expected to be
revised.
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Principal Objectives of Busan Action
Plan for Statistics (BAPS)
 BAPS has three principal objectives and five actions with indicators to
track progress of partner countries. The objectives are:
 Fully integrate statistics in decision making
 Promote open access to statistics
 Increase resources for statistical systems
 The action plan will require substantial effort and investment across
the range of development actors. While it establishes priorities, it must
still be translated into a set of time-bound and monitor able tasks.
 Financial support is expected to come primarily from domestic
revenues, but donor support remains essential and new sources of
financial assistance should also be sought to supplement existing ones
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The Three Principal Objectives of
BAPS - Ethiopian Context
 Fully integrate statistics in decision making;
 The country’s 5-years Growth and Transformation Plan
has integrated statistics in its decision making process
 Promote open access to statistics:
 The CSA’s website allows all data users to download all
statistical reports produced from censuses and surveys
to promote open access to statistics with the relevant
metadata . Moreover , one percent of the 2007
population and housing census micro data is freely
available in the public use domain to be accessible for all
data users.
 Increase resources for statistical systems
 The Government of Ethiopia (GoE) has repeatedly
reinforced its commitment to the production of accurate,
reliable, timely, and cost effective statistical data
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CSA is Promoting Open Access to
Statistics
 Sets a clear micro data access policy endorsed by the Council of Ministers
 The Central Statistical Agency (CSA) has done a tremendous work over the
recent years in documenting, archiving and disseminating its surveys and
censuses, building a strong partnership with the International Household
Survey Network (IHSN) and Accelerated Data Program (ADP).
 CSA utilized the DDI standard to systematically document and archive close to
100 of its surveys conducted since 1995 through a well established cataloging
system called ENADA available through the CSA website.
 The ongoing effort to establish the Question Bank having all the concepts,
definitions, classifications , coding schema and model questions is expected to
move the CSA open access further one step forward.
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Examining the Five Actions of the Busan Action
Plan in Ethiopian Context
 Action 1: Strengthen and re-focus national and regional statistical strategies
with particular emphasis on improving statistical systems that address countrylevel development priorities
 The Development and implementation of NSDS
 The inclusion of statistical programs in the GTP
 Action 2: Implement standards for data preservation, documentation, and
dissemination that permit full public access to statistics.
 The ENADA system
 The attempt to develop the Q-Bank
 Action 3: Develop programs to increase the knowledge and skills needed to use
statistics effectively for planning, analysis, monitoring, and evaluation
 The ongoing effort to conduct need assessment on statistical
knowledge gaps and the establishment of the statistical training center
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Examining the Five Actions of the Action Plan in
Ethiopian Context
 Action 4: Build and maintain results monitoring instruments to track outcomes of
all global summits and high level forums
 The establishment of the M&E system since 1996 for better monitoring the progress made
could be a good example .
 Action 5: Ensure financing for statistical information is robust and that
funding instruments and approaches reflect the new modalities and actors in
development finance.
 The sustainable commitment of the Government for the statistical
activities and the support of Development Partners are also important.
 In general, substantial effort and investment by all development
partners in terms of financial support, knowledge exchange and
technical assistances is required to build the capacity of the NSS
as well as that of CSA to effectively implement the action plan.
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Top Priority Areas identified the Need External
Assistance to Effectively implement BAPS
Priority One
“Support to agriculture, food security
and environment information systems
for policy, strategy and interventions”
Objective
 Improved data quality on key agricultural, food security
and natural resources data sets disseminated and analyzed
for policy, strategy and interventions at federal and
regional levels.”

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Top Priority that Needs External
Assistance ( cont’d)
Priority One
 The Project Document is at its final stage prepared with
the support of FAO financial assistances. The project
has concrete implementation milestones, indicative
costs, funding gaps, and expected outputs and
outcomes.
 PROPOSED FUNDING:
 DURATION:
USD $11,941,433
5 YEARS – period
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Top Priority That needs External
Assistance
Priority Two
 Establishment of Statistical Business Register(SBR)
 A concept note has been prepared and finalized by an
international consultant last November 2011.


This document describes all aspects of the proposed SBR;
It provides the basis for establishing the SBR Development Project;
 Stat Canada/ CIDA has been requested to assist in developing
the SBR project proposal document.
 Once this document is ready it is possible to come up with the
concrete implementation milestones, indicative costs, funding
gaps, and expected outputs and outcomes.
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Top Priority That needs External
Assistance (Cont’d)
Priority Three
 Establishment of a Training Center for the
National Statistical System
 One of the critical areas identified in the NSDS
document is building the capacity of the NSS through
the provision of continuous statistical training. More
specifically, the NSDS document emphasized the need
for the CSA to develop a training program for the NSS
staff based on the need assessment analysis.
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Top Priority That needs External
Assistance
Priority Three
 The establishment of this training center requires a
number of preparatory activities that requires both
financial and technical assistance.
 UNECA/ACS has been approached to provide TA to
conduct needs assessment.
 Determining the role of CSA in supporting and advising line
ministries to develop their capacity in the production of
reliable statistical information is very crucial.
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Top Priority That needs External
Assistance
Priority Four
 Institutional Capacity Building- Office Buildings
 To improve the working environment and creating modern
management and technological practices, building of
additional offices for HQ that serves as training centers
and new buildings for branch offices are very crucial.
 Any major investment in the statistical system in Ethiopia
should consider rebuilding or renovating the existing
buildings for the CSA both at the HQ and its Branch
Offices. It is expected to utilize the SRF-CF for these
purposes.
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Top Priority That needs External
Assistance
Priority Four
 Institutional Capacity Building- Office Buildings
 Creating Modern Offices would enhance the efforts to developing
human resources not only in the NSS but also within the CSA.
 To provide training and perform joint working among NSS
members, a classroom equipped with computers are very important
that need to be considered.
 This classroom could be used to train NSS members, reinforce and
improve data quality and in particular to undertake a wider range of
analytical activities. The overall objective is to improve statistical
skills and analytical capacity throughout the NSS.
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