Every year, in November, the African statistical community celebrates the African Statistics Day (ASD) with the objective of raising public awareness about the importance of statistics in the economic and social development of the continent.
CONCEPT NOTE
Theme : “Promoting Use of Quality data to support African Progress”
Every year, in November, the African statistical community celebrates the African Statistics Day (ASD) with the objective of raising public awareness about the importance of statistics in the economic and social development of the continent. This day was adopted in May 1990 by the Twenty-firth Session of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the Sixteenth Meeting of the African Ministers responsible for Economic Planning and Development to be celebrated each year. In Rwanda, the day will be celebrated on 22nd November 2013 under the guidance and coordination of the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR).
This year’s celebration will focus on use of quality data, which is essential for monitoring the achievement of national development plans and international development goals, such as the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
The theme for this year is “Promoting Use of Quality data to support African Progress”. It was chosen to draw attention to the importance of quality statistics for evidence based decision making in all aspects of socio-economic development processes. It also provides an opportunity to advocate support for major statistical operations, including censuses and surveys. The unreliable data may falsely allow a country to reach the eligibility requirements for debt relief or membership of a monetary zone, resulting in the destabilization of the zone when the real debt figures are revealed. Furthermore, unreliable, delayed and poor quality statistics affect our countries in a number of ways, including ill-designed adjustment measures and inability to mitigate the risk of devaluation. When drastic austerity measures are taken and over adjustment sets in, economies are often sunk into aggravate poverty.
Other advantages to having quality statistics include; planning, forecasting and crises prevention. The National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda’s dataset from surveys and censuses can allow the social planner to systematically adjust the number of schools, hospitals and infrastructure, consistent with population and economic growth. These types of statistics provide unbiased basis for evidence-based policy formulation and decision-making.
In the context of the celebration of African Statistics Day 2013, NISR in collaboration with UNICEF, UNWOMEN, World Bank, DfID and European Union is organizing for the second time a competition to invite graduate and postgraduate students of educational institutions of higher learning (both public and private) in Rwanda by participating in the NISR Infographic Competition based on the MDGs indicators. Infographics’ (or Information Graphics) are graphic, visual representations of data and information. They come extremely handy when it is required to explain complex information, numbers or data rather quickly and effectively. A great infographic can render complicated information easily understandable and engrossing.
It is from the above that the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda has organized a conference to be held on 22nd November, 2013 at 9:00a.m, Lemigo Hotel to celebrate 2013 African Statistics Day. Also during the conference, a show case of different NISR publications will be organized.