Global Calendar of Statistical Events

Organizer(s): FAO

Description: Twenty-eighth Session of the African Commission on Agricultural Statistics (AFCAS), in Johannesburg (South Africa).

Event URL: Event Page

Organizer(s): Group on Earth Observations South Africa

Description: GEO Week 2023 will take place in Cape Town, South Africa, from 6-10 November 2023. Organized by the Group on Earth Observations (GEO), and hosted by the Government of South Africa, the week will bring together practitioners to discuss the potential for earth observation to assist in addressing global challenges. CELEBRATING 2023 GEO SDG AWARD WINNERS The Group on Earth Observations and the Earth Observations for Sustainable Development Goals (EO4SDG) Initiative announced the winners of the 2023 GEO SDG Awards and FAO will receive two awards recognizing the productivity, innovation, novelty and exemplary efforts in the use of Earth observations to support sustainable development.After a careful evaluation by a panel of eight unique experts representing diverse countries and sectors, based on the overall impact, quality, and soundness of the Earth observation endeavors, and its potential for replication and upscaling, two of FAO's groundbreaking projects have been selected to win: WaPOR and EOSTAT.  The Award Ceremony will take place in Cape Town, South Africa, on 8 November 2023 at GEO Week. This prestigious award recognizes FAO's projects for their exemplary contribution to advancing sustainable agriculture and water resource management, and underscores the vital role that innovative applications of Earth observation play in addressing the world's most pressing challenges.     About WaPOR Launched in 2017, WaPOR is a publicly accessible near real-time database using satellite data to monitor agricultural water productivity at various scales. Since its inception, WaPOR has been providing near-real time data covering Africa and the Near East, and it has recently been expanded to encompass the entire globe. In addition to data production and dissemination, FAO, in collaboration with IHE Delft and IWMI, is actively assisting user groups in target countries in enhancing their capacity to utilize the data and create customized applications to meet the diverse needs of users, ranging from governments to service providers and farmers worldwide. Moreover, WaPOR holds significant relevance in reporting on SDG 6.4.1, focusing on water-use efficiency, with FAO acting as the custodian agency. All data, methodologies, algorithms, and scripts are made openly available, and the data is also disseminated through APIs to facilitate seamless integration into existing platforms, tools, or applications.     About EOSTAT Developed by the Bureau of Statistics of Lesotho and the FAO Office of Lesotho, EOSTAT is a solution that allows for on-the-fly computation of the SDG indicator 15.4.2  of the mountain green cover index (MGCI) at the national level, and disaggregated by elevation zones, using 10m resolution Sentinel-2 land cover data. Prior to its implementation, there were no mechanisms in place to update the existing national LC baseline from 2015, which made reporting on SDG 15.4.2 unattainable. In this context, this robust EO-based solution has been a game changer, as it satisfies a multitude of reporting tasks through national land cover and land cover change statistics. This allows for significant cost savings on field survey activities, and for pertinent data gaps to be filled with ensured accuracy, timeliness, and granularity. Thanks to the big data infrastructure underpinning the solution, it was possible to integrate the Land Cover and SDG modules with specific ecosystem health indicators, simplifying the process to monitor ecosystem status in any area in the country at any time.EOSTAT is currently used by the National Meteorological Services to identify hotspots of vegetation degradation, monitor the impact of land restoration projects, and assess the impact of climate change on the status of ecosystems. The Ministry of Forestry, Range and Soil Conservation also uses the tool to monitor the health of rangelands in real-time.  This partnership with the national FAO office on the EOSTAT platform increased Lesotho’s national capacity to produce SDG indicators and fostered new possibilities for monitoring national ecosystem health and ecosystem services. Related links WaPOR, remote sensing for water productivity SDG Indicator 6.4.1 "Water use efficiency" EOSTAT project SDG Indicator 15.4.2 "Mountain Green Cover Index" GEO Week 2023 programme

Event URL: Event Page

Organizer(s): BIS Reserve Bank South Africa

Organizer(s): London Group

Description: The London Group on Environmental Accounting is a city group created in 1993 to allow practitioners to share their experience of developing and implementing environmental accounts. Members of this informal group of experts come primarily from national statistical agencies but also international organizations. The London Group generally meets annually, and the meetings provide a forum for review, comparison and discussion of work underway by participants towards development of environmental accounts. In light of the global pandemic, the Twenty-seventh Meeting of the London Group will be held virtually on 27-30 September 2021 and 4 October 2021.

Event URL: Event Page

Organizer(s): UNICEF

Course Language: English

Organizer(s): UNCTAD ECA ECE

Description: The need for statistics on gender-in-trade is becoming pressing as governments strive to develop gender-responsive trade policies. The Regional Workshop will focus on the importance of collecting and utilising gender-in-trade statistics to support better policymaking across the African continent. In addition, the Regional Workshop also discusses the findings obtained from six pilot countries – Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kenya, Senegal, Cameroon, and Zimbabwe – that participated in undertaking exercises in micro-linking trade and non-trade data within their countries and identify ways forward for improved data collection in gender-in-trade statistics. The objectives of this regional workshop is to: * Encourage knowledge sharing amongst statistics officers on best methods and practices to support the collation of data and statistics on gender and trade and to understand how to undertake micro-linking of non-trade and trade data. * Drawing on the findings from the African pilot case studies, discuss the long-term goal of collecting sex-disaggregated trade data and identify gaps and proposed solutions for ensuring that national statistics collection includes gender-responsive indicators across the continent. * Improve understanding of regularising and implementing long-term data collection on informal cross-border trade (ICBT) to inform evidence-based policymaking that meet the needs of informal and small-scale traders. This workshop is organized by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), with contributions from the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Financial support for this project was provided by United Nations Development Account.

Course Language: English, French

Event URL: Event Page

Organizer(s): UNSD Statistics South Africa

Description: The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), in collaboration with Statistics South Africa, is organizing the 9th United Nations Global Forum on Gender Statistics in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event will take place on 29-31 August 2023.<br>The Forum will bring together producers and users of gender statistics from national and international statistical offices, other government agencies, international organizations, academia, civil society, and the donor community. On this occasion, the forum will focus ways to improve data and evidence on the growing challenges and opportunities offered by the care economy and its impact on gender equality. Panelists and audience will also strategize on how to make the best out of existing data, including by mainstreaming a gender lens into existing data processes. Additionally, the Forum will provide an opportunity to take stock and learn of good practices in gender statistics and data management from the African region.

Event URL: Event Page

Organizer(s): ECA UN-GGIM: Africa

Description: <!--Concept Note--><!--Programme of Work-->Registration: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1WSJMf-dl63QvGvfbxTphpC1u98_iFfcYaYAgutCYnYo/edit     I.                   Background        1.     The Regional Committee of United Nations Global Geospatial Information Management for Africa has been created to coordinate African geospatial development and to contribute to the larger global effort. The Regional Committee has made substantive progress in terms of gaining momentum and assuring the global community that Africa is serious about contributing. In order to pursue strong advocacy action towards policymakers in Africa, and strengthen the effort to turn geospatial information into a real sustainable development enabler, the Executive Board is organizing the ninth meeting of the Regional Committee as a back-to-back event with the 31st International Cartographic Conference (ICC 2023), from 14th to 18th August 2023 in Cape Town (South Africa). II.                   Objectives 2.     The main aim of the meeting is to review progress achieved on the recommendations and actions of previous meetings of the Regional Committee. The meeting will again offer the opportunity to share knowledge and best practices in the development of geospatial information in Africa; raise awareness of the benefits to be derived through the utilization of geospatial information for sustainable development; and look at policies, measures and steps that African countries could take to ensure successful implementation of the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management in the region. III.                   Issues to be addressed 3.     The issues to be examined at the meeting will include but are not limited to: (a)  Activities relating to geospatial information undertaken by the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), Member States and the working groups; (b)  Issues relating to geoinformation policy at the national and regional levels (e.g. geospatial strategies for modernising national mapping agencies) requiring a decision, resolution or recommendation by member States, ECA and partners, or other stakeholders; (c)  Technical issues flagged by member States or stakeholders, or tabled by the secretariat of the Regional Committee (i.e. ECA);  (d)  New trends and developments in the field of geospatial information (e.g. ethical use of spatial data, hyperlocal data, geography and statistics);  (e)  A special topic such as the geospatial financial appropriation framework.

Event URL: Event Page

Organizer(s): UNSD SACU

Description: UNSD and the Southern African Customs Union (SACU) jointly organized a Workshop on International Merchandise Trade Statistics (IMTS), Statistical Data and Metadata eXchange (SDMX), Structured Query Language (SQL), and Trade Data Tools. The Workshop involved 31 participants from SACU Member States’ institutions (customs offices, national statistical offices, central banks, and Ministries of Finance), 13participants from international organizations(UNSD, UNCTAD, SACU, COMESA and Office of the Resident Coordinator, United Nations -South Africa) of which 6 participated virtually. Participants shared best practices regarding the implementation of the International Merchandise Trade Statistics: Concepts and Definitions 2010 (IMTS 2010), especially for scope and coverage, issues of bilateral asymmetries, quality and data comparability, data dissemination, analyses and uses. The meeting also discussed emerging issues in merchandise trade statistics, including Digital trade, Big data, Trade by Enterprise Characteristics (TEC), and the revision of the international standards for trade statistics. Furthermore, the participants were introduced to the Statistical Data and Metadata Exchange (SDMX), Structured Query Language (SQL), and the new UN Trade Data Tool (TDT). Participants acquired new knowledge and information that will be applied to improve their work and programs in international trade statistics. Furthermore, the new perspectives and information shared in this Workshop will be further reflected upon in the ongoing processes for revising the international standards for trade statistics.

Organizer(s): IMF AI Generated

Organizer(s): IOM EU

Description: The workshop "Household surveys and international migration data: Using, improving and creating efficient migration data collection tools" will be conducted in a hybrid manner and will cater for in-person and virtual participation. Participants will be invited from the government departments in the Southern Africa Member States. The invitation will be shared with a broader statistical audience who may want to participate virtually and benefit from the discussions.

Course Language: English

Event URL: Event Page

Organizer(s): OECD

Original webpage was deleted, archived version from the Internet Archive (not a UN service): Link

Event URL: Event Page

Organizer(s): OECD

Original webpage was deleted, archived version from the Internet Archive (not a UN service): Link

Event URL: Event Page

Organizer(s): UNSD ECA UNEP World Bank Gaborone Declaration for Sustainability in Africa Statistics South Africa

Description: The Regional Training Workshop on the SEEA Experimental Ecosystem Accounting for countries in Africa is jointly organized by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), Statistics South Africa, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the Gaborone Declaration for Sustainability in Africa (GDSA), and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). The Training Workshop will be held in Pretoria, South Africa, from 28 to 31 October 2019, and is organized as part of the project “Natural Capital Accounting and Valuation of Ecosystem Services” funded by the European Union, and implemented by UNSD, UNEP and the Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD).

Event URL: Event Page

Organizer(s): UNSD ECA Statistics South Africa

Description: The United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD), in collaboration with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and Statistics South Africa is organizing a Regional Thematic Conference on managing a statistical organization in times of change. The conference is scheduled to take place from 7 to 9 October 2019 at the premises of Statistics South Africa in Pretoria, South Africa. This first Thematic Conference in Africa is part of a series of regional conferences to understand and prioritise the recent institutional, organizational and technical developments for the production of official statistics and indicators for the monitoring of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and related regional and national development plans.

Event URL: Event Page

Additional Urls:

https://unstats.un.org/capacity-development/thematic-conferences/africa-2019/

Organizer(s): UNSD UNCTAD WTO African Union

Description: The Regional Workshop will be organized by the United Nations Statistics Division (UNSD) in collaboration with the African Union Commission in Johannesburg, South Africa, from 24 to 28 June 2019. The workshop is a continuation of an e-learning course on International Merchandise Trade Statistics that was conducted from 25 March to 3 May 2019. The workshop will be hosted by the Government of the Republic of South Africa, represented by the South African Revenue Service. The objective of the workshop is to further enhance the capacity of trade statisticians to apply the most recent internationally agreed recommendations - IMTS 2010 - and to raise awareness on emerging measurement issues such as e-commerce statistics and big data for IMTS. The Workshop will contribute to the better understanding of the linkages between Trade statistics and other related domains of Economic Statistics, and improve cooperation among institutions providing, compiling and using Trade statistics.

Event URL: Event Page

Additional Urls:

https://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=2181

Organizer(s): IMF AI Generated