The seventh meeting of the Statistical Commission for Africa (StatCom7) opened virtually on Tuesday with a clarion call from Ethiopia’s President Sahle-Work Zewde for Africa to urgently transform and modernize its national statistical systems, especially in light of the continuing novel coronavirus pandemic.
In her remarks to officially open the meeting, Sahle-Work said African governments need to provide more support and budgets for modernizing national statistical offices for evidence-based planning and decision making.
“The transformation of national statistical systems in Africa is more important now than ever before as we fight against the pandemic and as we look to build stronger and better systems. Therefore, access to technology by national statistical systems must be promoted in all African countries in view of accelerating the production and use of data and statistics as public good,” she said.