Africa to establish methodological aspects of gender statistics by June 2009
ECA Press Release No. 47/2008
Addis Ababa 16 December (ECA) – African statisticians who have been meeting in Addis Ababa since Monday today ended the first African workshop on gender statistics with a decision to establish an African Gender Statistics programme (AGSPRO) by 2009 and an African Gender Statistical System (AGSYS) in 12 months.
In a series of resolutions read at the closing session of the workshop, participants undertook to ensure that the Kampala City Group is established and functioning by June 2009. The so-called Kampala City Group will focus on the methodological aspects of gender statistics. The Rio and New Delhi city groups for example, focus on poverty reduction statistics and statistics on the informal sector, respectively.
Speaking at the closing session of the workshop, the Director of the African Centre for Statistics, Mr. Ben Kirergyera, lauded the achievements of the workshop, saying that he had been surprised by the high level of knowledge accumulated so far by national statistics offices in Africa.
At the beginning, “I was concerned that the leadership of the national statistics offices, director generals, chair persons of statistical boards, etc. had not quite grasped this concept and needed to be trained on gender and gender statistics. But we have learned a lot from each other’s experiences”, he admitted at the end.
He said that he was also delighted by the outcome of the meeting, during which “we have generated a badly needed momentum and we will do whatever it takes to maintain it until policy and decision-makers in Africa have the gender statistics they need to measure progress”.
Representatives from Internationale Weiterbildung und Entwicklung gGmbH (InWent), and the African Development Bank (AfDB) also took the floor to praise the quality of the outcome of the workshop.
During the workshop participants focused on how to provide strategic direction and impetus for the mainstreaming of gender statistics principles in national statistics systems, with the view of enhancing the capacity of key change agents in the development of statistics at the national level.
It would be recalled that Mr. Kirergyera had challenged participants to move beyond sex-disaggregated data to produce “gender responsive” or “gender sensitive” data.
“I am sure you all agree that the workshop has been very information and useful”, he said at the end.
The delegate from South Africa took the opportunity to announce that his country would be hosting the 57th Session of the General Assembly of the Association of National Statistics Institutes in 2009.
He said that the assembly usually brings together some 2 500 representatives but that “ we intend to break that record not just in terms of numbers but in the quality of presentations to be made. This should be an occasion for Africa to show what it can do for itself and for the rest of the word”, he urged.
Since it began with the third Africa Symposium on Statistical Development (ASSD) in Accra, the idea of gender statistics is developing rather fast in Africa.
There was then the first meeting of STATCOM-Africa, in Addis Ababa, and the High Level Policy Dialogue, in Kampala as one of the outcomes of the STATCOM-Africa meeting.
Participants in the Addis Ababa workshop were heads of National Strategy Organizations, coordinators of NSDS, representatives of Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Units (PRSP), key line ministries, heads of regional statistical training centres, head of statistics and gender programmes in regional economic communities (RECs), gender specialists and representatives of development partners.
The workshop was a follow-up to one of the resolutions of ADF VI, which called for financing for gender equality. It comes just a day before and another workshop opens in Addis to harness National Strategies for the Development of Statistics (NSDS) in Africa.
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