By Abdelmonem Fawzi
We always quest after perfection and that needs accuracy and the availability of data.
The problem is that perfect data does not exist. When data is missing, we often point our finger to it and blame it for being either wrong or unusable. Simply put: we will get nowhere if we accuse data of being wrong.
While perfection may not be possible, improvement certainly is – and it can pay big dividends.
This was what we faced when the continent was recovering from Covid-19 and other external shocks.
These shocks threatened to flatten a positive trajectory against several indicators, especially decent jobs.
However, the question now is how can one achieve better results when using doubtful and incomplete data?
This was why the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) hosted the Africa Statistics Day 2022 celebration.
The celebration adopted the theme ‘Strengthening data systems by modernizing the production and use of agricultural statistics, with a view to informing policies to improve resilience in agriculture, nutrition, and food security on the African Continent’.
The event was organized in collaboration with the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Union Commission (AUC), and the Food and Agricultural Organization of the UN (FAO).
Oliver Chinganya, director of the African Centre for Statistics at the ECA, said the webinar intended to inspire thinking on the need to strongly advocate for statistics, especially agricultural statistics, given their critical role in shaping the farm economy as a more sustainable livelihood.
In her keynote address, Minister of State in Charge of Economic Planning for the Government of the Republic of Rwanda, Uwera Claudine, said improving agricultural data systems would close existing data gaps by ensuring a reliable flow of timely data for informed approaches to advance policy dialogue and policymaking towards building resilient systems for sustainable agriculture and by extension, food security on the continent.
Chief of the Economics and Statistics Division at the Pan-African Institute for Statistics, Adoum Gagoloum, highlighted the critical role Africa Statistics Day plays in the African agenda.
“It is an opportunity for data users to get together and deliver a message to political decision-makers, the civil society and the private sector,” he said.
Gagoloum underscored the need for strengthening data systems to enable Africans to develop human capital and advance social and economic development.
Acting Director for Statistics at the AfDB, Louis Kouakou, reaffirmed the bank’s commitment to supporting national statistical offices across the continent.
“We support African countries through the Statistical Capacity Building project which provides technical assistance on various statistical domains including agricultural statistics,” he said.
FAO’s Chief Statistician, Pietro Gennari, talked about the capacity of African countries to monitor food and agriculture related to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators.
While data availability across Africa is increasing, he said, data gaps in key indicators and some countries still constrains the continent’s ability to design and implement targeted interventions to combat food insecurity, malnutrition and the degradation of natural resources.
He advocated a systemic approach to improving the production and use of food and agriculture-related SDG indicators within a broader effort to modernize national statistical systems.
Other participants in the event included Director General of Ghana Statistical Services, Samuel Annim, Director of Agricultural Statistics for Benin, Alexandre Biaou, and Acting Director of Senegal’s National School of Statistics and Analysis, Idrissa Diagne.
Each year, the Africa Statistics Day focuses on raising awareness amongst decision-makers, development partners, data producers and users, academia, researchers, and the public about the importance of statistics.
National statistical offices in member states organize events to celebrate the occasion and foster debate around its themes.
This year, the events focus on conducting agricultural censuses and surveys and the adoption of modern tools and methodologies for analysing food security, as well as the use of statistics in planning, monitoring and evaluation in Africa.
Good data management is crucial for keeping up with the competition and taking advantage of opportunities.
High-quality data can also provide various concrete benefits for businesses.
However, modernizing agriculture data infrastructure is essential for economic improvement. It better equips farmers and the African Department of Agriculture with tools to adapt, innovate, and ensure a food-secure future, given the dynamic conditions in which the sector operates.
Data innovation is necessary for addressing the growing number of critical short and long-term food and agricultural issues, including agricultural production, environmental sustainability, nutrition assistance, food waste, supply chain disruptions, and food and farm labour.
Although many farmers are already collecting production data about their farms that can help solve these issues, this information remains mostly unavailable to other farmers and policymakers.
We need to focuses on how data innovation can provide farmers and ranchers with better information about their farms and enable research to understand how different farming practices impact profitability, risk, and environmental outcomes.
It remains to be said that we are the world’s breadbasket – or should be. Our continent has vast arable land, grows a wide variety of crops and has vast irrigation potential with seven major rivers, so what are we waiting for?
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