Experts from the African Union (AU) and the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) on Thursday urged African governments to sign and ratify the African Statistics Charter for the continent’s economic and sustainable development.
“It’s high time governments take all measures to sign the African Statistics Charter and to ratify it,” the experts, who are meeting in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, said in a press conference at the close of their first working day.
The experts lamented the fact that African statistics were always less reliable and African governments resorted to the statistics provided by international organisations.
“If we don’t produce our statistics, we’ll be faced with realities unknown to us,” the director for economic affairs at the AU Commission, René Kouassi said.
The experts said out of 53 countries, only 20 had signed the Charter and only Mauritius had ratified it.
The preparatory technical meeting of the committee of experts, which opened on Thursday, will discuss the topic for the session which is “Managing Africa’s development” and make recommendations that will be submitted to the ministers in charge of statistics for adoption.
The committee will also look into the present socio-economic conditions in Africa, consider other statutory issues linked to the activities of the AU Commission and ECA and make recommendations that will be submitted to the conference
