The 21-member Common Market for East and Southern Africa (Comesa) Business Council has hailed efforts attained by its members, including Malawi to improve data gathering and dissemination by statistical offices.
Comesa Business Council president James Chimwaza said this in an interview yesterday as national statistical organisations across the continent celebrated the African Statistics Day, which falls on November 18.
He said although he is not well conversant with the quality and how clean the National Statistical Office (NSO) data is, he is sure about the improvements in data gathering and dissemination because of training provided in recent years.
Said Chimwaza: “A lot of efforts have been put in place to improve data gathering and dissemination in a well-funded project, which targeted the whole continent and significant improvements have since been attained in that regard.
“What remains now is consumption. The issue is how effectively policymakers and other stakeholders are utilising the data because most statistical information is available and drivers of the economy must ask for it.”
In a statement, NSO commissioner for statistics Shelton Kanyanda said his office plays a critical role in providing high-quality data, which is critical for policymakers, development programmes planners and the business community.
On the African Statistics Day, he said NSO celebrated the day focusing on the importance of statistics to education under the theme ‘Supporting education by modernising the production of fit-for-purpose statistics’.
Said Kanyanda: “National statistical systems play a central role in modernising data value chain processes, including data generation, dissemination and administration.
“This is with a view to attaining the timely production and use of relievable official education statistics, which are critical for evidence-based policymaking.”
NSO said this is in line with African goals to encapsulate the call to modernize data ecosystems on the continent with a view to producing and using high-quality education related statistics and to seizing the opportunities presented by technological advances and big data.
One of the stakeholders that expressed pessimism with the credibility of the NSO data is the Consumers Association of Malawi (Cama) executive director John Kapito, who said inflation figures are not reflecting the realities on the ground.
“The figures are misleading because the real inflation is felt by the ordinary consumers who are grappling with the high cost of living,” he said.
NSO, headquartered in Zomba, is the main government department responsible for the collection and dissemination of official statistics.
