Abstract

African international institutions such as the African Development Bank (AfBD), the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF), the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) and AFRISTAT have contributed in different ways over time to build capacities in official statistics in Africa. In line with their respective mandates, with their priorities and with their own financial instruments, they have had different strategies and actions. Concentrating on approximatively three decades going from the beginning of the 1990s, when capacity building disrupted the way development and cooperation were implemented in Africa, and 2023, this proposed paper focuses on choices, motivations, differences and commonalities. To this extent, it must be recognized that the International Comparison Program for Africa (ICP-Africa) has enabled regional and national initiatives facilitating cross-country comparisons of GDP.
In addition to the African institutions mentioned above, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA)’s African Centre for Statistics, has a different role in this complex landscape, as it is part of the global UN system, despite being based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
Nowadays, when the data revolution included as a crucial crosscutting dimension of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for sustainable development emphasizes the role of updated quality data to monitor and evaluate progress and drawbacks on its implementation, these institutions are still very active, but priorities have changed, as well as the overall landscape of official statistics in Africa. Furthermore, in a time when a variety of data sources exists, the emphasis on official statistics and on their critical role when it comes to ownership cannot be given for granted.
This paper aims at providing an overview and an analysis of past and present activities in this domain in Africa. This portray encompasses activities undertaken on the continent by non-African organizations such as the OECD, the World Bank, the IMF, and also by non-African countries. An emphasis will be put on the coordination of activities and programs, and on the measurement of their effectiveness, at a time when such contributions are sometimes questioned.
Drawing lessons on the results obtained, when possible, the paper proposes a unique, comprehensive and instructive picture of a complex scenario, relying on published sources, gray literature, but also interviews.