Resource Centre

Eca Delivered a Training for Trainers on the “Effective Use of Administrative Data in Agricultural Statistics” in Lusaka, Zambia from 19-23 June 2017.

The training was organized in partner­ship with the National Statistical Office of Zambia. The training of trainers was developed for the first time based on the guide­lines of the Global Office-Research Component. The training brought together participants mostly from universities and statistical training centers from the following coun­tries: South Africa, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Namibia, The Gambia, Sudan, Kenya, South Sudan, Tanzania, Lib­ya, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Egypt, and Zambia. For country perspectives, Mr. Itani Mag­waba of Statistics South Africa and Mr. Din­giswayo Banda, Chief Economist in the Ministry of Agriculture (Planning Division), Zambia have presented their respective country experiences.

The training covered specific topics such as the importance of administrative data for agricultur­al & rural statistics, potential sources of adminis­trative data, examples of administrative sources (participating countries experiences, challenges and limitations of administrative data, roles of administrative data in sampling and estima­tion, quality of ad and the way forward, scien­tific approaches for adjusting or improving ad before use, methodology for obtaining the data, decentralization and levels of information man­agement calculations, efficient use of ad, survey design and mod­el — assisted weighting methods, combining multiple data sources, analysis and inference with multi­ple data sources, as well as meth­odological and technical tools for data integration. The training also benefited from a filed visit to Zambia’s CSO to gain from the practical experiences of Zambia. The event was officially opened by the remarks of Mr. John Kalumbi, Director General of Central Statisti­cal Office of Zambia and introductory remarks by Mr. Said Adejumobi – Director ECA-Sub-Re­gional Office of South Africa. The trainings benefited from detailed country experiences on the effective use of administrative data in agricultural statistics.

From 7 to 11 August, 2017 Gaborone, Botswana

In this quarter, the training component focused on extending the implementation of the training of trainers to additional universities, training centers as well as NSOs and Ministries of Agriculture. Three training of trainer workshops on the topics of Effective use of Administrative Data, Food Balance Sheets in English and French have been delivered. The trainings have been generously hosted by the respective national statistical offices of Statis­tic Botswana, National Statistical Institutes of Morocco and Tunisia. The three workshops have served almost 80 participants from a total of 21 African Countries. Institution wise, an extensive reach has been undertaken in inviting new and active universities working in Agricultural Statistics training and research across the various sub-regions in the continent.

The main objectives of this Training of Trainers (ToT) workshop was to give the participants the skills and competencies necessary for producing and using as a team a Food Balance sheet based on agricultural cen­suses and surveys that allow easy integration of the data from various areas of statistics, including demo­graphic statistics and other economic statistics.

The ToT was primarily designed to serve Statistical Training Centers, Schools, and Universities as well as national statistical offices and Ministries of agricul­ture dealing with the production and contributing to the development of National Food Balance Sheets in their respective countries. Some selected NSOs were invited to present their experiences as practi­cal showcase. The participants for this training were drawn from statistical training Centers and Univer­sities such as L’Institut Sous-régional de Statistique et d’Economie Appliquée (ISSEA)- Cameroun, Insti­tut De formation Et de Recherche Demographiques (IFORD)- Cameroun, Haremaya University- Harar, Ethiopia, Makerere University – Kampala, Uganda , Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS)- Egypt, Faculty of Agriculture, Universi­ty of Khartoum, Sudan; Fisheries Hatchery Manage­ment, Aquatic Pollution and Toxicology, University of IBADAN- Nigeria ; University of Nairobi, Faculty of Agriculture, Nairobi, Kenya ; University of Namibia, Faculty of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Wind­hoek, Namibia; Department of Mathematics and Sta­tistics, University of Zambia, Lusaka Zambia ; School of Mathematics, Statistics and Computer Science, University of Kwazulu-Natal, South Africa. The Na­tional Statistical Offices from the following countries were also integral part of the training of trainers: Le­sotho, Malawi, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Gambia, Libya, Rwanda, and South Sudan

The workshop was officially opened by Ms. Ms Anna Majelantle, Statistics General of the National Statis­tics Office of Botswana. In her opening Ms. Majelantle stated FBS were the main source of data used in the as­sessment and appreciation of the world food situation and they were also suitable in estimating the overall food shortages or surplus in a country. “They are use­ful in developing projections of future food supply and demand as well as evaluating national food and nutri­tion policies,” she said, adding that FBS provided sound baseline data for policy analysis and decision-making needed to ensure food security. She said they expected the workshop to result with better understanding of the requirements for producing and using FBS to en­hance statistics on agriculture and to improve physical scope of official statistics by mainstreaming agricul­tural statistics within the national statistical systems of Africa. On the other hand, she said this would ulti­mately result in an enhanced capacity of African na­tional statistical systems that produced and dissemi­nated high quality agricultural statistics.1

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1 Goweditswe Kome: 08 August 2017, “Development stakeholders collaborate to improve agricultural statistics “Botswana Daily News. http://www.daily­news.gov.bw/news-details.php?nid=37681