Opening Remarks by Oliver Chiganya at the Sixth Africa Gender Statistics Forum

"Pooling Together for Gender Statistics: Financing the Numbers that make Women and Girls Count".

Joint AfDB-PARIS21- UNECA -UN Women -HCP

Regional Workshop on Gender Statistics

8-12 July 2024

OPENING REMARKS

The UN Resident Coordinator

Resident Representative -AfDB

Resident Representative -UNWomen

Resident Representative -PARIS21

All Protocol observed.

Good morning, ladies, and gentlemen.

On behalf of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), I would like to thank you all, I am indeed delighted and honored to you at this important Annual Africa Gender Statistics Forum on the theme "Pooling Together for Gender Statistics: Financing the Numbers that make Women and Girls Count".

Allow me Distinguished Participants to remind us that United Nations Member States have given FfD4, to be held in Spain from 30 June to 3 July 2025, an ambitious mandate to address financing challenges "in the context of the urgent need to accelerate the implementation of the 2030 Agenda and the achievement of the SDGs and to support reform of the international financial architecture."

I need not remind us that Africa's financing landscape has been worsened by recent global shocks (incl.Covid-19 pandemic, the Russia-Ukraine war and climate threats) and the financing gap for SDGs in Africa is estimated at USD 1.3 trillion per year (ECA, 2020). To meet the people-related Goals, Awel, et al (2022) estimate that Africa needs an additional $850 billion a year. the Secretary General has called for an SDG stimulus of $500 billion per year, asking the international financial institutions and community to reform themselves. According to estimates from ACS, at the current pace, Gender equality will only be achieved in 2094,

The opportunity for the FFD4 also lies in the quality of statistics that provide a basis for good decision-making and help governments identify the best course of action in addressing development problems. They are essential in managing the effective delivery of basic service, and are indispensable for assuring accountability, transparency, and democracy. Yet todate only a few countries have sufficient data to monitor indicators for SDG 5, approximately 23 percent of data is disaggregted

To this end ECA has strengthened its statistics sub-program to be able to support its Member States statistical capacities. Support is provided to member States through harnessing new technologies, including geospatial information systems, to improve data collection, processing, analysis, dissemination and archiving capabilities, as well as facilitating access to national, sub-regional and regional databases.

In addition, services are provided to member States and regional entities on statistical legislation and national strategies for the development of statistics (NSDS), aligned with national strategies and plans.

Ladies, and gentlemen

Harmonization of statistics is a key pillar of the statistical work of ECA in the continent. In addition to introducing new systems and methodologies for standardization, harmonization takes place through the adoption of international statistical norms, standards and classifications, and adaptation to regional and national realities.

The vision, therefore, of the African Centre for Statistics at ECA is "Transforming Africa through credible data and statistics" through its core mandate of providing leadership and technical support to the Pan African System, focusing on the national statistical systems of ECA member States and secondly, to compile and make available key data sets on African development to ECA, UN agencies and other data users.

It is based on this mandate and strategic aim of enhancing capacities of member States to be able to respond to demands for fit-for-purpose data, that the annual joint AfDB-UN Women-ECA inter-agency regional workshops on Gender Statistics have been held since 2017. The purpose of these gender statistics forums is to provide a platform for harmonizing and strengthening the collection and use of gender statistics in the region on thematic areas. It is for this same reason that we are holding this six Africa Gender Statistics Forum.

I wish you fruitful deliberations.

Chief William Muhwava

For Director ACS

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