Unlocking SDG Success: How Better Data Can Develop Africa

Oliver Chinganya, Director, Africa Center for Statistics. Credit: Busani Bafana/IPS

By Busani Bafana
ADDIS ABABA, Jan 10 2025 (IPS)

That one in three Africans will not be counted as countries failing to meet census deadlines is a huge setback for development planning.

With the 2030 deadline for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) looming, research reveals that Africa lags behind in meeting the crucial goals. A further challenge is that many African countries do not have accurate information about the socio-economic needs of their populations to better plan for development programs.

But there’s a way forward: investing in robust data and statistical systems, says Oliver Chinganya, Director of the Africa Center for Statistics (ACS) and Chief Statistician of the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

African governments speak of the importance of data, yet the investment often falls short, Chinganya tells IPS. He underscores the urgency, pointing to Africa’s uneven participation in the UN-led census rounds since 1990. He warned that 376 million people risked not being counted if more countries did not participate in the census.

“Accurate and credible statistics are the ‘new oil’ that will boost national economic growth by helping governments to improve on their SDG targets as they can plan better in allocating development spending while keeping track of what they have achieved,” Chinganya told IPS.

Without accurate data and statistics, development planning is difficult for many African countries, who are forced to rely on statistics not generated from and by the continent, he said.

At the SDGs Summit in 2023, the UN launched The Power of Data to unlock the Data Dividend as one of the 12 high-impact initiatives to help scale up the SDGs. African governments committed to investing 0.15 percent of their national budgets in the statistics sector but few countries have followed this through.

IPS spoke with Chinganya, following the 11th meeting of the Forum on African Statistical Development (FASDEV), an initiative of the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), which fosters connections among countries, partners and institutions that support statistical development.

Excerpts:

IPS: What are we really talking about when we mention data and statistics and why are they important in Africa’s development?

Oliver Chinganya: Data and statistics are very important; they are used for planning at different levels. It is not just the government that requires data these days but everyone. Before you go to the market to buy whatever you want, you always need data first of all for you to make decisions before buying—how much they cost and what you would require for these things to be brought home.

At the government level, similar decisions that you make at the household level are being made where the government is asking questions about what we need to plan for us to be able to develop. For instance, how many schools do we need, and what kind of curriculum do we need to put in place? What kind of roads do we need? What kind of production systems are required in the country? Different data and statistics are required to be able to inform decisions.

Statistics provide evidence for policies. They help establish goals, identify needs, and monitor progress. It is impossible to learn from mistakes and hold policymakers accountable without good statistics.

Good statistics are crucial for managing the delivery of basic services efficiently and effectively, and they play a crucial role in improving transparency and accountability. Statistics contribute to development progress, not just as a monitoring tool but also as a tool for driving the outcomes measured by the statistics. In terms of national development, statistics play a very important role.

IPS: How would you describe the state of statistics in Africa?

Chinganya: When one asks about the status of statistics on the continent, it’s a mixed bag, given that some countries are really making very good progress and some are not. For instance, in the 2020 round of population census, 39 African countries conducted their censuses. The rest of them were not able to conduct their censuses and by December 2024, one in three people had still not been counted on the continent. This is unfortunate and it has implications for service delivery and development.

At present, we have countries that have not been able to modernize their statistical systems. One of our main focuses right now is to see how we can help countries modernize and transform their national statistical systems. This means moving away from the traditional way of collecting data using paper-based systems to modernizing data collection using gadgets like tablets and mobile phones. We are helping countries to modernize and transform their national statistical systems. But even with that, a number of countries are experiencing challenges moving towards the process of establishing and using modernized systems. The biggest challenge is access to technology. Technology is driven by energy. Without energy, you cannot have efficient, technologically driven systems in a country. Having access to efficient Internet services allows countries to collect information using gadgets.

IPS: What achievements have been made and what challenges have been encountered?

Chinganya: African countries have made some really good progress in undertaking population censuses. In past census rounds, countries were taking two to five years to collect and disseminate the data, but with modernised systems, this has been reduced to 45 days in some of the countries. This is a big milestone.

ECA has introduced a statistical leadership program, which has led to changes across the continent. In this program, statisticians are kept abreast and introduced to ways of managing statistical systems, thus building their capacities across the board.

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) exposed the vulnerability of African national statistical systems both in their routine operations and, more particularly, in their data collection activities in the field. To respond to these challenges, ECA has enhanced the capacity of and has provided technical support to the Member States in producing and disseminating harmonized and comparable economic statistics and national accounts, following the international statistical standards.

IPS: What needs to be done to help those countries that have failed to conduct censuses, which you say will impact the SDGs?

Chinganya: For countries that have progressed toward the SDGs, they need support to accelerate their progress so that by 2030 they can attain those SDGs.

Governments must invest a little more in data and statistics. They should not wait for others, including development partners, to do it for them. This is their data. All governments acknowledge the importance of data. But if it is important, then they must put value on that which is important. What is required are resources, prioritizing, and ensuring that data and statistics are part of the national development processes by developing a national strategy for statistics.

IPS: The ECA has developed a roadmap for the transformation and modernization of official statistics in Africa for the period 2023 to 2030. What progress has been made in implementing this?

Chinganya: We have made a lot of progress. For instance, during the 2020 census round, countries used tablets to collect the data. That is modernizing. In other words, moving away from traditional ways of collecting data.

In addition, through the Consumer Price Index, data collectors can go online and look at the prices of consumer goods or go to supermarkets and scan the data. That is part of the modernization. Furthermore, countries are now using what we call administrative data. That is part of modernizing systems. The records at health centers or in hospitals are now being transformed into digital forms so that they can be collected digitally.

IPS UN Bureau Report