AFRICAN DEVELOPMENT BANK GROUP WORKSHOP

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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
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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.
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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
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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.
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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
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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
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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
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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.