Dakar, Senegal, 20-21 March 2017: The African Union Commission (AUC) in collaboration with the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) opened on 20 March 2017, an extraordinary Session of the Committee of Directors General of National Statistics Offices (CODGs) in Dakar, Republic of Senegal.

The objective of the extraordinary session is to review and validate the revised version of the Strategy for Harmonization of Statistics in Africa (SHaSA II). The document will be submitted for consideration and adoption to the Tenth Joint Annual Meetings of the African Union Specialized Technical Committee on Finance, Monetary Affairs, Economic Planning and Integration and the Economic Commission for Africa’s Conference of African Ministers of Finance, Planning and Economic Development scheduled to take place in Dakar, Senegal, on 23 - 28 March 2017.

Speaking on behalf of the host country, Mr. Aboubacar Sedikh Beye, Director General of the NSO of Senegal welcomed all to Dakar and highlighted that SHaSA II address issues and challenges facing statistical development in Africa including coordination and institutional capacity building. He also emphasized that implementation of National programmes, SDGs and Agenda 2063 need to take into account and give impetus to data revolution.

In his capacity as Chair of the tenth ordinary session of CODGs Director General of Cote d’Ivoire, Mr. N’Guessan Gabriel highlighted that the meeting should validate and adopt the document in order to fast track its implementation along with the Agenda 2063 and Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development. 

Addressing the participants Mr, Joseph Ilboudo, representative of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa informed the meeting that harmonization of statistics is at the heart of the programme of African Center for Statistics. He also highlighted that Africa should benefit from the global UN programme on supporting the development of statistics.

The representative of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Mr. Lawson Fessou emphasized that SHaSA II is very important for ensuring the implementation of the AfDB ten year strategy and priorities of the Bank high fives (H5s).

On his part, Dr. Rene Kouassi N’guetta, Director of Economic Affairs, welcomed participants and, on behalf of H.E. Mr. Moussa Faki Mahamat, Chairperson of the AUC, expressed appreciation to all for attending the meeting. He seized the opportunity to introduce the representative of the Kingdom of Morocco and reminded the challenges faced by the continent in the production, coordination and harmonization of statistics due to lack of legal instruments. He also made a reference to the development of the African Charter on statistics and SHaSA I as a response to those challenges. He underscored the need to review SHaSA in order to address emerging issues including Agenda 2063, Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development big data and data revolution. He also highlighted the importance of the process of the revision of SHaSA for its subsequent consideration and adoption by the above mentioned conference of Ministers of Finance, Economic planning and integration.

Finally, he ensured that all comments will be integrated and the document will be finalized in collaboration with AfDB and ECA before the final adoption by the Summit.

For media inquiries contact:

Tankou Azaa Esther, Head of Information Division/ Directorate of Information and Communication Tel: +251 911361185 / E-mail: YambouE@africa-union.org / | African Union Commission /

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