AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK GROUP WORKSHOP
Transcription
AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK GROUP WORKSHOP
0 AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK GROUP First Al Khawarezmi Conference The Role of the African Development Bank in Fostering Statistical Development in African Arab Countries Opening Statement By Dr. Charles Leyeka LUFUMPA Director, Statistics Department 6-8 December 2010 Doha, Qatar 1 His Excellency Dr Sheikh Hamad Bin Jabar Al Thani His Excellency Dr. Shaikha Abdulla Al Misnad Distinguished Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, INTRODUCTION May I first of all, on behalf of the African Development Bank Group, thank His Highness the Emir of Qatar, the Government and people of Qatar for the warm hospitality that they have graciously shown to us. We are also grateful to the Qatar Statistics Authority as well as all those who have contributed to make this conference possible. Let me also take this opportunity to congratulate the government and people of Qatar for deservedly winning the bid to host the 2022 World Cup. Indeed the excellent organizational arrangements put in place for this conference are testimony to the capacity of this great country to organize successful international events. Special thanks also to His Excellency Bin Jabar Al Thani, Chair of the organizing committee and President of the Qatar Statistics Authority for his strong leadership of the Qatar Statistics Authority and for this gesture of invitating the Bank to participate in this First Al Khawarezmi Conference which also commemorates the Qatar National Statistics Day. 2 THE BANK’S COMMITMENT TO STATISTICAL DEVELOPMENT IN AFRICA, INCLUDING AFRICAN ARAB COUNTRIES Mr. Chairman, Ladies & Gentlemen, The African Development Bank, a premier development finance institution in Africa, has its fundamental mission and core function of financing development projects and programs by deploying concessional and non concessional resources to promote socio-economic development in African countries. But its role is more than just financing development projects. It also assists member countries to better target their development projects, programs and policies and to develop clear and systematic measurement and reporting mechanisms on achievements of outputs, outcomes, and their impacts on the lives of African people. This approach is premised on the Bank’s ongoing commitment to the Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, to the Accra Agenda for Action, and in line with the directives of the ADF Deputies which mandate the Bank to place results measurement at the core of its development agenda. And the achievement of the results agenda hinges critically on the availability of reliable and timely statistics. In this context and, as part of the global agenda on Managing for Development Results, the Bank is making considerable efforts to strengthen both its own capacity and the capacity of its regional member 3 countries to manage for, monitor and report on development results that reflect country priorities. Mr Chairman, The Bank has since January 2008 systematically required the incorporation of a standardized set of indicators that measure the most recurrent outputs and intermediate outcomes achieved through its operations. To this end, the Bank makes it mandatory that efforts are made to ensure that adequate capacity is developed to generate the requisite data and monitor project indicators at the country level. Following international best practice, the Bank will henceforth require all its projects and programs to set aside adequate resources of a project’s total cost on monitoring and evaluation efforts, both to build country capacity and to collect data as part of project implementation. The Bank will allow for higher allocations to projects that are deemed complex or where existing national statistical systems are weak. Consequently, this move will scale up our statistical development activities in African countries both in terms financial and technical support for national statistical systems. And since a significant portion of the Bank’s projects and programs are in Arab African countries, we should expect a sizeable amount of resources to be provided to support statistics and monitoring and evaluation systems in Arab countries. You will therefore, appreciate the Bank’s strong attachment to statistics in general, and to such events that promote and advocate statistical development. 4 Mr. Chairman, Ladies & Gentlemen, Today the Bank stands as the leading provider of technical assistance and financial support for statistical development in 52 African countries, including all the Arab African countries. This assistance and support also covers sub-regional organizations, such as the Arab Maghreb Union and statistical training centers in Africa, including institutions in Arab African countries. Through its statistical capacity building program, the Bank has provided over 80 million US Dollars in direct grants over the last 5 years to build capacity in African countries. A sizeable portion of this amount has gone towards supporting efforts in Arab African countries. The Bank is currently in the process of boosting its assistance to Arab African countries with an additional 5 million US Dollar grant to strengthen national statistical systems in the Maghreb Union area. This does not include the support likely to materialize for statistics and monitoring and evaluation in the Bank’s projects in Arab African countries. KEY AREAS OF BANK SUPPORT The Bank’s technical assistance to its African member countries is at two levels: (i) developing standard methodological approaches and (ii) assisting countries to adopt internationally accepted standards and best practices in their statistical activities. The knowledge packages are shared through 5 regional seminars and training sessions, involving experts from all African member counties, and through specialized and individualized technical assistance to countries and sub-regional organizations on a demand-driven basis. One such request we are supporting and which we hope to conclude shortly is from the secretariat of the Arab Maghreb Union. The support covers a wide range of activities from the elaboration and coordination of the Africa-wide Strategy for statistical development, supporting countries to design and implement national statistical development strategies, managing the international comparison program for Africa and improving price statistics and national accounts in African countries; and helping countries and regional economic groupings to harmonize statistics and foster regional integration. The support also includes assisting African countries in other areas such as population and housing censuses, household surveys, civil registration and vital statistics, MDG monitoring, agriculture and rural development statistics, governance, infrastructure, gender, environment, and climate change statistics. In the specific area of agriculture, the Bank is leading efforts to develop an action plan and mobilize resources for improving agriculture and food statistics in Africa. In infrastructure, the Bank is leading efforts to improve the knowledge base on the state of infrastructure in Africa and in identifying investment needs for infrastructure development on the continent. We expect to mobilize about 50 million US dollars to cover our activities in these areas over the next 5 years. In addition, the Bank’s program provides support to African countries to improve data processing, storage, and dissemination systems for statistical outputs. It also includes critical support 6 to exploit unused or underutilized existing data and our activities cover all African countries, including the Arab African countries. Last month in Cairo, at the 6th African Symposium on Statistical Development which we co-organize every year to mobilize African countries for the 2010 Round of Population and Housing Censuses, we created and launched the African Statistical Association, with its first President from Tunisia. This is part of our efforts to strengthen statistical development in African countries, while leveraging support from the more advanced systems of Arab African countries. The Bank also facilitates south-south cooperation using experts from Arab African countries to support efforts in countries with less advanced statistical systems. CONCLUSION Mr. Chairman, Ladies & Gentlemen, This, in a nutshell, is a brief outline of the efforts the African Development Bank is making to support statistical development in Africa, including in Arab African countries. We believe that by coordinating our statistical building activities in all these countries, we stand to benefit from economies of scale, standardization of methodologies and improvements in data harmonization and comparability. The continent also stands to gain in fostering the culture of accountability, good governance and results measurement in the pursuit of development and in ensuring the optimal use 7 of the scarce development resources. All this would be very difficult to achieve, if not impossible, in the absence of reliable and timely statistics. Allow me, Mr Chairman, to end my remarks by once again reiterating the Bank’s strong commitment to support African countries, including African Arab countries, in their efforts to strengthen their statistical systems and in advancing the results agenda through evidence based development policy management. I wish you all a successful conference.