Embrace statistics to ensure informed policies – experts

Africa needs to enhance statistics to ensure informed decision making and interventions that transform lives, experts attending the ongoing the 49th annual African Development Bank General Meetings in Kigali have said. “Policy makers need to make use of statistical indicators to determine the potential of certain businesses by not only looking at the profitability of the business but also the risks involved,” said Yusuf Murangwa, director general of the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda during a panel discussion yesterday. He said it was also important for the public to know what is happening and that the African Information Highway, which was launched in 2012 by the continental Bank, came in handy to provide statistical information on African. The Africa Information Highway is a data management and dissemination platform developed by the Statistics Department of the AfDB in response to data access challenges faced by governments, policy-makers, research institutions, private sector, analysts, academia and citizens. Ncube Mthuli, chief economist and AfDB vice-president, said that because of inadequate use of statistical information, the official size of the African economy was estimated at just $1.5 trillion, with leading economies like Nigeria and Kenya enjoying high growth levels over the past years. He argued that this could have been more than $2.5 trillion. He said the underestimation of the African economy showed how much inequality there was in African countries regarding the gathering and use of statistical data. He added that it was important for policy makers to start using statistics in order to attain high economic growth indicators like high employment rates. Pali Lehohla, Statistician General for Statistics, South Africa, said statistics create transparency, accountability, and economic transformation.