Until recently, population censuses in Africa had fallen on hard times. They were characterised by irregularity, incompleteness and inaccuracy.
When they did occur, governments often lacked the capacity and ability to use the information collected. Policy formulation, and the monitoring of programme implementation and socioeconomic development, took place in a statistical vacuum.
Opening the first Africa Symposium on Statistics Development, held in Cape Town in January 2006, finance minister Trevor Manuel noted that 19 out of 56 countries and territories in Africa had not conducted a population census in 10 years, nearly twice as many as in the previous decade.
Angola, for example, had not conducted a census in 41 years, while Somalia's last population count took place over 30 years ago. Some African countries ravaged by war, such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Eritrea and Liberia, had not undertaken a full census in two decades.
Now a message of hope has rung out from Kigali, which hosted the 2007 Africa Symposium on Statistical Development, co-organised by the UN's Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda and Statistics SA. Held from January 15 to 19, the meeting was attended by about 350 delegates representing 46 African countries.
The challenge that was put to the gathering of Africa's top statisticians was to unveil a programme for the counting of all the continent's estimated 900 million people before the end of 2014.
This was the second annual symposium organised to ensure that all African countries participate in the current round of population and housing censuses. Delivering the keynote address at the opening ceremony, Rwanda's President Paul Kagame stressed the importance of this project.
"Our continent cannot transform," he argued, "without a solid statistical base. Reliable statistics for evidence-based policy development is very important."
This message was emphasised by one delegate to the symposium, who asked governments how they could govern without knowing who they governed. How do you deliver services to the citizens if you do not know where they are, how many they are, and what their needs are?
Delegates learnt that successful censuses recently took place in Cameroon, Lesotho, Nigeria and Egypt. This year, censuses are planned for Swaziland, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Sudan and Malawi. Liberia and Eritrea plan to enumerate their populations in 2008, while the DRC will go to field in 2009. Census preparations are under way in Angola and Somalia, where civil wars destroyed institutions and national capacity, preventing population counts for decades.
The Africa Symposium on Statistical Development works through the ECA, with support from the Friends of the ECA group (Egypt, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa and Tunisia), to help restore statistical infrastructure and capacity in Africa. It has developed a work programme to encourage the undertaking of a census in every African country.
The symposium wants to ensure that reliable and accurate country-level monitoring becomes an indispensable element in assessing progress towards achieving the UN's millennium development goals.
Countries emerging from conflict and war require particular support in developing their statistical capacity. This was recognised by the 39th session of African ministers of finance and economic planning, held in Ouagadougou last May, which agreed that assistance should be provided to such countries.
That passing resolutions at symposiums is less important than implementing decisions through practical programmes.
South Africa occupies a prominent role in these initiatives. Stats SA organised the Cape Town symposium in 2006, and assisted in convening the recent Rwanda gathering. As statistician-general, I serve as chair of the Friends of the ECA.
However, one of the aims of the ECA is to build national statistical capacity in all African countries, and over the next years to hold an annual symposium hosted in each country on the continent. Next year, the baton will be passed on to Ghana.
Concluding his keynote address to last year's symposium, minister Manuel reminded delegates that statistics were the basis of measurement, and that if you cannot measure the development, you cannot manage it. This became the mantra for the Cape Town gathering.
The Kigali symposium took this one step further. Urging all African countries to undertake censuses by 2014, delegates quickly adopted the motto of the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda: "If you don't count, you don't count."