Marrakesh, 21 July 2017: In a meeting held on 20 July 2017 in Marrakech, under the joint chairmanship of Morocco’s High Commissioner for Planning Ahmed Lahlimi and ECA’s Deputy Executive Secretary for Knowledge Delivery Giovannie Biha, Directors general and representatives of some 40 African national Statistics institutes called on the Economic Commission for Africa and the High Commission for planning to organize a regional conference on the role of statistics in support to regional integration in Africa. This event is to take place in Morocco in 2019.
The meeting, which had been organized on the margins of the 61st World Statistics Congress (Marrakesh, 16-21 July 2017) to discuss “the role of statistics in the African integration process” allowed African heads of statistical institutions, UN representatives and other partners to discuss the challenges and levers related to the upgrading of national statistics systems and their role in African regional integration.
Participants agreed on the crucial need for countries to produce their own, high quality, statistical data, to support the implementation of public policies adapted to countries’ development needs and help them achieve the common goals described in African and global development roadmaps such as the Agenda 2063 for African development, the global Sustainable Development Goals (Agenda 2030), the Africa Action Summit of heads of States, held in Marrakech on the occasion of COP22 and the UN framework conventions on biodiversity, desertification and climate change as well as the Paris Agreement.
Given the extent of the work and reforms required to achieve African development ambitions, participants called on HCP and ECA to organize the Conference of Directors general and Directors of African national statistics institutes in 2019, in collaboration with partner development institutions in Africa and taking into account the ECA and African Union statutory mechanisms.
“With ECA, we have been considering the organization of a meeting with African countries since 2015. This gathering will be all the more important since it has become crucial for our countries to equip themselves with tools that will enable us to remain in control of our statistics. If this is not done, the indicators that will be produced will not necessarily meet our development needs”, said Lahlimi at the meeting.
According to Biha, given the huge amount of data needed to efficiently implement Agenda 2063 and the SDGs “Statistical systems must transform in order to respond quickly and efficiently to an increasing number and diversity of requests, including with the set-up of efficient infrastructures for the collection, treatment, analysis, dissemination, filing and promotion of the use of statistics in every field”.
Note to the editors:
The High Commission for Planning (HCP) is the Moroccan national statistics office. The main national producer of economic, demographic and social statistics, HCP’s roles include drawing up national accounts, evaluating the macroeconomic framework, carrying out situation studies and prospective research.
The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) is one of the five regional commissions of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC). ECA supports Africa’s development by helping countries formulate and implement policies and programs to achieve economic and social transformation.
For more information about this event, please contact:
ECA: filali-ansary@un.org | +212 (0) 673 734 462,
HCP: hcpcommunication@hcp.ma | +212 (0) 660 10 22 55
World Statistics Congress website ISI2017: http://www.isi2017.org/
