New Business Ethiopia

The seventh meeting of the Statistical Commission for Africa (StatCom7) opened virtually on Tuesday with a clarion call from Ethiopia’s President Sahle-Work Zewde for Africa to urgently transform and modernize its national statistical systems, especially in light of the continuing novel coronavirus pandemic.

African leaders are advised to exploit statistics, the ‘new oil’. “Statistics is the new oil that our leaders must, henceforth, harness to engineer business processes on the continent,” said Oliver Chinganya, Director of the African Centre for Statistics (ACS) at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA).

Statisticians are urged to do more to explain and sell their work to ensure their product helps African governments to make informed policies that can change communities and democracies for the better.