Description: This side event, in connection with the main 4th Global Expert Forum event, is jointly organized by ESCAP, UNEP and ECE, to explore the nexus between disaster related statistics and civil registration and vital statistics systems, including the use of civil registration to support the production of disaster-related statistics. Date: 1 November 2024Venue: United Nations Conference Center, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Format: Mainly in-person, with the possibility of online presentations.Duration of the event: 3 hoursParticipants: All participants attending the expert forum and interested participants from the African StatCOM and UN-GGIM: Africa
Description: The Statistical Commission for Africa is the regional equivalent of the Statistical Commission of the Economic and Social Council, which is the highest body in the global statistical system. The Statistical Commission for Africa is the highest decision-making body in Africa responsible for setting statistical standards, developing concepts and methods and implementing them at the national, subregional and continental levels. The meeting provides an opportunity for participants to discuss the link between African and global statistical systems to ensure that Africa is not left behind in global statistical initiatives. Participants will also be able to discuss progress and statistical development in African statistical systems. Furthermore, the meeting will serve as a platform for international partners to meet representatives of member States of the Economic Commission for Africa to discuss the needs of those member States.
Description: UNSD participated in the First Global Workshop for the 2024 Voluntary National Reviews (VNRs) organized by the DESA and hosted by ECA with the support of the European Union. The workshop facilitated a practical exchange of experiences and knowledge among countries, as well as explored specific issues and challenges related to the VNR preparations. To this end, it engaged officials from finance ministries, statistical offices, planning and sectoral and other ministries and institutions engaged in the VNR at national level. UNSD led the data session in exploring how statistics and data are critical for reviewing progress towards the SDGs. The session explored challenges in the availability and analysis of statistics in the preparation of their VNR and at the same time, the key opportunity to build on countries’ statistical capacities and understand countries’ progress towards the SDGs. The session encouraged countries in developing a data and statistics roadmap for the VNR process following the Practical Guide for Evidence-based VNRs developed by UNSD, based on the national SDG monitoring framework and exploring additional opportunities to fill data gaps. It also provided lessons learned from countries who have presented their VNR in the previous years. In addition, Colombia and Mauritius presented their country experience followed by UNECA highlighting the regional support mechanism. The workshop attracted participation from thirty-four countries slated to present their VNRs in 2024. The event commenced with opening remarks by H.E. Paula Narváez, Permanent Representative of Chile to the United Nations in New York and President of ECOSOC. Mr. Antonio Pedro, Deputy Executive Secretary of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), also extended welcome remarks.
Description: This was first in a series of regional expert consultations and meetings to enhance national geospatial information management arrangements and accelerate the achievement of the SDGs. It was convened from 23-28 November 2023 on ECA premises with the support of the Geospatial Information Management Section (GiMS) in ECA. The consultation engaged geospatial leaders from Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and South Africa. Staff from ECA and UNSD, including the Director of the recently established United Nations Global Geospatial Knowledge and Innovation Centre (UN-GGKIC) in Deqing (China) as well as invited resource persons participated. The group energetically interacted providing guidance and reviews on their national efforts, challenges, and accomplishments towards implementation of the United Nations Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (UN-IGIF) in African countries, particularly through UN-IGIF Country-level Action Plans. This included sharing challenges and accomplishments in engaging and working with colleagues across government, including national statistical offices, to integrate geospatial information, statistics, and other relevant data to produce ‘geospatially disaggregated’ indicators for visualizing and ‘story telling’national development priorities and the SDGs. In this regard, the group also provided valuable contributions to improve the recommended approach and related guides, resource materials and tools developed to support national efforts towards implementing the SDGs with the UN-IGIF. This highly interactive peer-to-peer learning approach benefited from the selfless sharing of real frustrations, accomplishments, joys, and pains to improve the visibility and impact of national geospatial programs and entities, and their contribution to national development. In this process, the group highlighted the importance of leadership –including personal commitment and passion – and strategies that can be employed to grow geospatial leadership in organizations and across government. A key element for success is having good governance structures and institutional arrangements in place, including government mandates and resources to ensure the sustainability of the UNIGIF. They also highlighted the importance of effective communication, and engagement, not only within their organizations, but also across government and amongst partners and stakeholders. The need to provide key messages and build multi-agency collaboration was referenced several times throughout the week. The geospatial leaders from Africa gratefully acknowledged the valuable support they are receiving from UNSD and the SDG Data Alliance in their journey of learning and discovering, allowing them to improve their national geospatial information management arrangements, and supporting the achievements of national development priorities and the SDGs. They confirmed the efficacy of the United Nations recommended ‘self-pace, learn and discover’ approach to develop their UN-IGIF Country-level Action Plans and the importance of demonstrating impacts through the use of enabling geospatial technologies including SDG Data Hubs. However, whilst appreciating the support and assistance thus far, the group requested further support be made available to the many other countries in their continent that are willing and ready to enhance their national geospatial information management capabilities and capacities. Noting that the overarching goal of the UN-GGKIC is to work towards the ambitions of implementation of the UN-IGIF, and to provide technical assistance and capacity building for national SDG monitoring and reporting and allowing greater availability and visibility of country data at sub-national, national, regional and global levels, it was agreed that the UN-GGKIC will be a key ‘implementation mechanism’ of the UN-IGIF in the years ahead, and is also well placed to support the ongoing work of the SDG Data Alliance. In discussions, the group of also requested that a geospatial leadership and executive training program could be established within the program of the UN-GGKIC as a tangible outcome to decision 13/101(h), where the Committee of Experts, at its thirteenth session, recognized the “efforts of developing countries to enhance and support the leadership roles within national geospatial and mapping agencies to ensure that effective geospatial information management contributes to increased geospatial capacities and capabilities, and shared knowledge for geospatial enablement across and within Member States”.
Description: The Workshop will train participants from national statistical offices on quality assurance and its implementation throughout the national statistical system and support the development of additional guidelines on quality assurance. The Workshop will provide an overview of the contents of the Manual and the UN National Quality Assurance Framework, review and discuss the implementation of quality assurance in participating countries and discuss quality assurance in the case when new and administrative data sources are being used. The sharing of experiences will also support the development of further implementation guidance.
Description: The Regional Committee of United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management for Africa was established to coordinate African geospatial development and to contribute to the wider global initiative. Over the past decade, the Regional Committee has adopted realistic approaches to ensure that systematic and comprehensive frameworks are put in place, along with related policies, resources and systems to make geospatial information technology easily accessible to decision-makers and the community in a coordinated way. To ensure that appropriate geospatial information products are used in decision-making, the Regional Committee supports its member States in developing a holistic vision that fosters the effective use of geospatial products and resources to address emerging global challenges and support various social and economic sectors in Africa. The roles of the Regional Committee include the following: (a) Articulating policies and strategies with appropriate guidelines for the establishment of local, national, regional and global spatial data infrastructures and their linkages with other plans and strategies; (b) Developing capacities and capabilities in a transformative and holistic manner with a long-term vision to increase spatial literacy, spatial awareness and navigational skills; (c) Maintaining an authoritative data repository (fundamental and thematic), information and knowledge resources, tools, applications and services, with greater use of common standards and interoperability for metadata, naming, coordinate references, etc.; (d) Encouraging and facilitating the integration of statistics with geospatial information to attain viable and meaningful outcomes, analysis and visualization of data to support and track progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals; (e) Strengthening advocacy for the specific needs and interests of Africa within international mechanisms. Read more
Organizer(s): ECA UNICEF UNFPA UNHCR IOM WHO UNDP World Bank AfDB African Union Vital Strategies Global Financing Facility La Francophonie Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data ONS United Kingdom CDC United States Bloomberg Philanthropies Data for Health Initiative
Description: Report on the expert segment (Click the image to enlarge) Experts Group Meeting of the 6th Conference of African Ministers Responsible for Civil Registration will be held from 24-28th October 2022 in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on the theme: A Decade into APAI-CRVS: Reflecting on progress and accelerating efforts towards 2030 through transformed systems. The Conference aims to: a) review progress in the development of CRVS systems over the last ten years, including taking note of new developments since the last Ministerial Conference and the fast-approaching deadline of the 2030 agenda; b) share innovative practices and strategies for the development of CRVS systems and; c) provide policy directives on priority measures and strategies for accelerated improvement of CRVS systems which will constitute the new regional CRVS strategy and plan. In order to adhere to public health measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the meeting will adopt a hybrid approach, allowing for in-person and virtual participation. The EGM will bring together country experts drawn from Ministries Responsible for Civil Registration, Ministries of Health, National Statistical Offices, and National Identity Management offices, Young African Statisticians and development partners. The meeting, which will draw seasoned panellists from within and outside Africa, is envisaged to identify priority strategic actions that will accelerate progress of civil registration and vital statistics (CRVS) systems in Africa over the next 8 years, ensuring there’s considerable progress in achieving 100% and 80% registration of births and deaths respectively as set by the sustainable development agenda by 2030. Sustainability All documents of the meeting will be made available electronically through a dedicated portal, while a ‘print on demand only’ service will be provided on site.
Description: In 2018, UNECA and UNCTAD, with the cooperation of UNODC, inaugurated a new Development Account project called “Defining, estimating and disseminating statistics on illicit financial flows in Africa”. The project aimed at consolidating existing and testing new methodological guidelines for the measurement of Indicator 16.4.1 “Total value of inward and outward illicit financial flows (IFFs)”, as well as to build and strengthen statistical capacity by providing technical assistance and guidance to pilot countries for the measurement of such indicator. As a result, an UNCTAD/UNODC Conceptual Framework for the Statistical Measurement of Illicit Financial Flows was published in October 2020, and in June 2021, UNCTAD published Methodological Guidelines to Measure Tax and Commercial IFFs for pilot testing. Large-scale pilot testing has been ongoing in 2021-2022 of the UNCTAD Guidelines in eleven African countries: Angola, Benin, Burkina Faso, Gabon, Ghana, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and Zambia. A hybrid Closing Conference of the project is being organized to discuss the implementation of activities related to the measurement of tax and commercial IFFs in the eleven African countries. Each national representative will present the process; results; lessons learned and next steps of their countries’ involvement in the measurement of IFFs. Discussions will also focus on common grounds and initiatives of other stakeholders in curbing IFFs in Africa, and on the next steps for policy actions.
