The Director of ECA's Economic Development and NEPAD Division, Emmanuel Nnadozie, flanked by Bartolomew Armah, Chief of MDGs/LDCsand Dozie Ezigbalike, Coordinator of data management
ECA launches web-based tool to monitor progress in least developed countries
ECA Press Release No. 69/2011
Istanbul, 16 May 2011 (ECA) - The Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) has launched a web-based visualization tool which spatially tracks national and sub-national progress in the implementation of the various programmes of action designed to address the structural handicaps to economic growth in the LDCs.
The tool was demonstrated in Istanbul at the just concluded UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries, according to the Information and Communication Service (ICS) of ECA at the conference.
ECA LDC Monitor is a visualization tool that tracks progress by capturing and exhibiting performance at national and subnational levels; providing policy makers with geo spatial information crucial for targeted interventions and ensuring integrated assessment of national and subnational performance.
It provides policymakers with a visual overview of progress that is easy to grasp and accessible to a wide audience and empowers stakeholders with an invaluable and simple-to-use tool for advocacy.
The tool provides for data to be stored for different years and is capable of handling multiple data sources. It can be used to query the actual value for a country and to compare values of a subnational administrative unit with the national figures. For better visual appeal, the data fed in the monitoring tool can be presented as bar charts, in animation and in time series line graphs across years.
ECA’s Director of Economic Development and NEPAD Division, Emmanuel
Nnadozie, while introducing the tool at a side event at the margins of the Istanbul conference, said policy makers in Africa and elsewhere can use the LDC Monitor to obtain the geo-spatial information crucial for targeted interventions and relevant fiscal transfers across administrative borders.
Although effective monitoring requires reliable data at national and subnational levels to ensure a comprehensive assessment of performance, many African countries do not have such adequate reliable data, said Nnadozie.
“This is why in many African countries, performance is reported at an aggregate or national level thereby making intra-country
1 of 2 7/16/2014 9:52 AM
variations in performance which are often larger than inter-country variations”, he said.
He said the ECA LDC Monitor would adequately resolve various challenges that LDCs are facing in their attempts to monitor progress they are making in internationally agreed development goals, including the Istanbul Programme of Action.
He listed some of the challenges as the weak statistical capacity for data collection and analysis, non-standardization of data collection methodologies and systems across countries; restriction of data collection and analysis to only aggregated level and the difficulty with capturing sub-national variations in performance, resulting in suboptimal policy responses.
Nnadozie cautioned, however, that the ECA LDC Monitor would be as effective as the data fed into it. “Optimizing the geo-spatiasl capabilities of the tool will depend on the political will and the capacity of LDCs to systematically gather and disseminate data on relevant performance indicators.
When it becomes fully functional at the end of May 2011, the tool will be available at ecastats.uneca.org/ldc
Meanwhile, plans are being made to take the LDC Monitor to targeted LDCs in Africa to train policy makers on its use and functionality and to elicit useful feedback from countries which can be used to improve future versions.
Thirty three of the 48 LDCs are in Africa.
Ends.
Issued by:
ECA Information and Communication Service P.O. Box 3001
Addis Ababa Ethiopia
Tel: 251 11 5445098 Fax: +251-11-551 03 65 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.uneca.org
Media Inquiries, please contact:
Ms. Sophia Denekew ([email protected])
