23 Feb 2014

 The African Symposium on Statistical Development (ASSD) is one of the ways of doing away with glaring data gaps in monitoring progress in Africa. 

This was said by the Minister of Labour and Home Affairs, Mr Edwin Batshu when officiating at the 9th African Symposium on Statistical Development dinner.

Mr Batshu said the ASSD initiative was imperative as it was one of the ways that the African statistics community could met to share best practices in the planning, management, execution, processing, analysis and dissemination of data. 

The focus of the 9th ASSD was Civil Registration and Vital Statistics (CVRS). Mr Batshu urged delegates to let the emphasis of their deliberations be on the availability of reliable and current vital statistics.

“Let this conference be a vanguard for raising the level of awareness among us all, about vital events and periodic population anchored on reversing what has come to be referred to as the scandal of invisibility. This will go a long way towards helping us to plan appropriately,” he added. 

The need to focus on CRVS, he said, was strengthened by a resolution that was taken by ministers responsible for CRVS at the 6th ASSD that was held in Cairo, Egypt, in 2010. He said it was also directed that five consecutive meetings be held from 2011-2015 in order to monitor implementation and progress of CRVS in Africa. 

The need for reliable vital statistics, Mr Batshu said, would usher in a new perspective to Africa’s development. “This in a way resonated well with this year’s theme which was: Promoting the use of civil registration and vital statistics in support of advancing good governance in Africa.”

Mr Batshu said Botswana acceded to the request by the ASSD secretariat to host the event motivated by the strides that the government has made pertaining to the management of CRVS.

He said the government also took cognizance of the position that CRVS had taken at the global level as an important and reliable source to augment data collection platforms such as population census and surveys. 

Mr Batshu said the government was committed to developing its data sources to a level where “we can in our own small way provide a platform for sharing experiences and best practices and being of service to the global community, hence our decision to host this important event.” Ends