22 October 2010
Benedicte, a Statistics, Monitoring & Evaluation Adviser with DFID, has spent the last 2 years working closely with the Central Statistics Organisation in Afghanistan. Here she reports on why World Statistics Day is so important to one of the world’s most fragile states.
Statistics? More than just a load of numbers?
In Afghanistan we take statistics pretty seriously – so much so that for World Statistics Day on 20 October, the Vice President of Afghanistan, Mr Karim Khalili, opened the World Statistics Day Conference here in Kabul. A number of senior Ministers and high ranking officials attended – and so did DFID. In a country with an intense political agenda and competing events, this is a notable demonstration of support for data.
We’re striving to get better data in Afghanistan. Otherwise, how would we know if there is any progress? The Government of Afghanistan estimates that there are now 5.2m children attending school. How many are still out? About the same number? Of course it’s important that we know.
The long road to high-quality data
Mr Martin Kobler, Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary General, the second highest official in the international community made it very clear at the event that statistics matter a great deal.
As one example he mentioned that this week we also had the preliminary results of the parliamentary election, with 1.3m ballots being invalidated. We need reliable data on the population and the electorate – not least to know how many ballots to get printed and dispatched across a mountainous country twice the size of UK and Ireland combined, most of which is in conflict. Deputy Minister of Women’s Affairs, Palwasha Shaheed Kakarr (pictured above) also spoke about the role of data in relation to gender in the country.
The organisation best placed to produce and disseminate data about Afganistan is the country's Central Statistics Organisation (CSO). Over the last few years, CSO has gradually been doing more and more. There is now a regular household survey capturing information on social and economic conditions of Afghan people. This year, price data collection has expanded from 6 to 10 cities. A household listing was conducted last winter. The yearbook is compiled every year in an increasingly timely manner. Just this August a new policy was announced which allows pretty much anyone to access anonymised micro-data.
DFID has been supportive of CSO for a long time, and over the last couple of years provided increasingly more direct support to the Organisation as it showed signs of commitment and emerging ability to benefit from such support. While continuing to help CSO in punctual but significant improvements, more recently we focused on putting together a still prioritised but much broader and deeper programme of support. Together with World Bank and the Netherlands, and in close coordination with EU and UNFPA, the Statistics for Results Facility is now coming into place.
The Government of Afghanistan is one of four countries so far to have successfully bid for the Statistics for Results Facility – a global initiative which aims to help governments tackle the challenges faced in producing and using statistical data for policy, planning and evaluation work.
Its objective is to secure sustained improvements in the production, availability and use of high-quality statistics – vital for ensuring the accountability of the Government to Parliament and its people.
Demanding high-quality statistics
To mark the importance of this programme and the day itself, the Minister of Finance, Dr Zakhilwal signed the World Bank’s funding agreement for this project. Afghanistan will receive the highest allocation - $14 million over the next four years – commendable recognition of the high quality of Afghanistan’s application and the Afghanistan National Statistical Plan.
CSO senior staff are rightly proud of Afghanistan being in the lead on this and the first country to have advanced preparations up to the point of signing the agreement.
Dr Zakhilwal demanded high quality statistics in return, saying:‘Democracy is not yet institutionalised. We need impartial information. If the Government claims they have done something, and the people say otherwise, these are not trivial conflicts. We need impartial statistics to help make our programmes effective.’
The day also saw the presentation of the new Statistical Yearbook to the Vice President – an important tool used by both the Government and development partners to gauge the real picture of Afghanistan.
The World Statistics Day event, backed by progress over the last few years, offered encouraging signs that we’ll meet the aim: in the not too distant future, there will be annual, accurate and easy to access data in Afghanistan – on poverty, population issues, education, health, prices, national accounts and much more – all being routinely used for designing and monitoring national policies and programmes. The journey however, is only beginning, and it will not be an easy one.
Afghanistan, DFID and statistics
Statistics play an increasing role in the way DFID does business: bilateral aid reviews, results based financing, and aid effectiveness are just a few of the areas in which evidence and data are imperative to our work.
Statistics help us understand the scale of the development challenges, so that we can direct our aid to where it is most needed and where it has most effect, and so that we can monitor impact. Focussing on results and delivery is more important than ever - and nowhere is this more true than in Afghanistan, where DFID is committing £700m over the next four years.