AfricaPress-Tanzania: AFRICAN countries should borrow a leaf from Tanzania as far as development of statistics is concerned, the Vice-President, International Statistical Institute (ISI), Oliver Chinganya said on Wednesday.
He said Tanzania has good statistical legislations and policies aimed at improving the national statistics and that his institution is working closely with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on how to improve performance.
He made the remarks while addressing the Tanzania Statistical Association (TASTA) annual general meeting held here on Wednesday.
The ISI vice-president who addressed the meeting virtually from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia reminded the association members to maintain professionalism in their duties.
Speaking on the ASD2020, he said the annual event serves as a reminder for countries to improve statistical activities.
The African Statistics day is celebrated on November 18 every year in order to ‘increase public awareness about the important role which statistics play in all aspects of social and economic life’.
The theme for the ASD 2020 is “Modernising National Statistical Systems to Provide Data and Statistics to Support Sustainable Peace and Development In Africa,” where Chinganya said: “Tanzania has done a lot of improvement and other countries should take lessons from the country.”
He noted that modernisation of national statistic systems was vital for development and African countries should strive to adopt modern statistics standards.
Elaborating, he singled out a case of Covid -19 that had shown how weak statistical systems in African countries and the rest of the world were and how vulnerable the World was.
“Institutional weaknesses, inadequate financing, low support are some of the challenges facing national statistics offices, a clear indication that African statistical system is not responsive and does not meet the demand of data economy” he added.
Speaking at the sidelines of the TASTA meeting, the Chairperson, Titus Musomba said the aim of the annual meeting was to bring together members and discuss on how to process data for quality statistics.
He noted that statistics were important in development of any nation as it helps policy makers plan for development. The TASTA boss also called on statisticians in the country to use official statistics.
“Let all statisticians in the country use official statistics and follow procedures set by the government through NBS,” he stressed.
