09 Jul 2024

Africa's financing landscape has been made worse by global shocks and the continent needs trillions of dollars per year to meet Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) targets, says Mr William Muhwava of Africa Centre for Statistics and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

He said the Forum for Sustainable Development had been mandated to address Africa's financing challenges in the context of the need to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the achievement of the SDGs as well as to support reforms of the international financial architecture.

Speaking at the Gender Statistics Forum in Gaborone on Monday, Mr Muhwava said the financial gap for SDGs was estimated at about P17. 68 trillion (US$1.3 trillion) per year.

He said to meet people-related goals, it was estimated that the continent needed P11. 501 billion a year, noting that the UN secretary general had called for a P6. 766 billion stimulus per year to achieve the SDGs targets, and urged international financial institutions and communities to reform themselves.

He said estimates from the Africa Centre for Statistics (ACS) had indicated that at the current pace gender equality would be achieved in 2094.

Furthermore, he said to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4, depended on the quality of statistics as they provided a basis for good decision making and helped governments identify the course of action in addressing development challenges. 

He added that they were essential in managing the effective delivery of basic services and indispensable for assuming accountability, transparency and democracy.

Moreover, he noted that only a few countries had sufficient data to monitor indicators of SDG5 and that approximately 23 per cent of data was disaggregated.

He said the Economic Commission for Africa had strengthened its sub-programme to support member states statistical capacities. 

He also said support was provided to member states through harnessing new technologies, including geo-spatial information systems to improve data collection, processing, analysis, dissemination, archiving as well as facilitating access to national, sub-regional and regional databases.

He also said services were provided to member states and regional entities on statistical legislation and national strategies for the development of statistics which was aligned with national strategies and plans. 

He added that the harmonisation of statistics was key to the statistical work of the ECA in the continent.

In addition to introducing new systems and methodologies for standardisation, he said harmonisation also took place through the adoption of international statistical norms, standards, classifications and the adaptation of regional and national realities.

For her part, acting statistician, Ms Ketso Makhumalo said the user needed disaggregated statistics to inform evidence based plans. 

She said it was equally imperative that their policies, plans and interventions were sensitive to the intricacies that underpinned gender differentials, adding that it put pressure on statistical organisations to produce data and reports disaggregated by gender.

She noted that the forum had brought together users, producers and experts in policy analysis and gender statistics across Africa to share the latest innovations and best practices related to gender statistics to engage in policy dialogue.

Therefore, Ms Makhumalo said the forum would create an opportunity to link gender statistics financing for accelerated progress, adding that the forum also aimed to make better use of limited resources and time through sharing best practices and developing common strategies to rationalise, harmonise and improve the measurement and use of gender statistics in Africa.

Also, she noted that Statistics Botswana was collaborating with the national statistical system to help collect, finance and analyse data according to best practices, including gender statistics.

She further said Statistics Botswana was providing technical guidance for collection and analysis of such information, and that gender disaggregation of statistics was also emphasised in administrative data. Ends