Comesa, AfDB launch US$3.4m grant for statistical programmes

Comesa, AfDB launch US$3.4m grant for statistical programmes
Written by Kabanda Chulu
Monday, May 18, 2009 3:58:48 PM

COMMON Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (Comesa) yesterday launched a US $ 3.4 million grant aimed at assisting member states to implement statistical capacity building programmes in four outlined areas.

The funding, which would be administered by Comesa, is part of the US $35 million grant allocation from the African Development Bank (AfDB) earmarked for statistical capacity building activities in African countries for the period 2009 to 2010.

During the signing of the protocol of agreement between Comesa and AfDB, Comesa secretary general Sindiso Ngwenya emphasized the important role statistics played in evidenced-based monitoring and policy analysis.

Ngwenya said the funding would cater for four cluster areas and would be based on the priorities as expressed in member states’ national strategies for development of statistics (NSDS) or the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP).

The first cluster would target NSDS update or design, improving national accounts, prices and economic statistics in general including training while the second cluster would involve the improving of social statistics, poverty monitoring and analysis through assisting countries to improve the quality and timeliness of statistical outputs with respect to population and housing censuses, household surveys and MDGs monitoring.

The third cluster would cover support for agriculture and rural development statistics, governance, infrastructure, gender, environment and climate change statistics while the fourth cluster would involve support to countries to improve data processing, storage and dissemination systems for statistical use.