Improving Agricultural Statistics in the COMCEC Region

Table 14 presents the SCI scores of 48 COMCEC Member Countries as of 2012. Firstly, the

COMCEC average score of the overall capacity is almost identical to that of the world average.

Asian group’s average score of 70 is higher than the African groups score of 63, which in turn is

higher than the overall score (58) of the Arab group. COMCEC, as does the rest of the world,

registers relatively higher scores in the periodicity and timeliness component and the lowest

in the methodology component. The champions in the overall score are Mozambique and

Nigeria in the African group, Egypt in the Arab group, and Kazakhstan in the Asian group.

Gabon and Somalia in the African group are at the bottom of the list with scores of less than 30.

In terms of statistical methodology, the COMCEC averages are lower than the rest of the

developing countries: Mozambique, Côte d'Ivoire and Nigeria in the African group, Jordan and

Morocco in the Arab group, and Turkey and Kazakhstan in the Asian group are performing

best, while Somalia and Comoros are performing the worst. In the data sources employed

component, Egypt and Kazakhstan are by far the best performers, Gabon, Syria, Djibouti and

Somalia are the worst. In terms of updatedness, Indonesia is the best with a full score followed

by Tajikistan. Libya shows the worst performance in this component of SCI.

It should be remembered that the SCI is not specifically targeting agricultural statistics but

rather statistics in general. Nevertheless, it is a useful indicator on the statistical environment

within which agricultural statistics operate. It should also be noted that SCI has three

dimensions, namely methodology, source and timeliness, which are equally weighted in the

index. Furthermore, the dimensions consist of 10, 5 and 10 indicators respectively, each of

which is also equally weighted within a dimension.

The

Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics

initiative involves the

development of regional action plans to provide guidelines to strengthen the capacity of

national statistical systems to produce information for decision-making relating to food

security, sustainable agriculture and rural development. This global and regional initiative

involves a concerted effort from data producers, data users and partners in development.

In line with these goals, Africa was the first region to develop its Action Plan (2011-2015)

titled “

Improving Statistics for Food Security, Sustainable Agriculture, and Rural

Development”.

The Africa Action Plan forms part of the wider

Global Strategy to Improve

Agricultural and Rural Statistics

, endorsed in 2010 by the international community. The

Action Plan for Africa has contributed significantly to the design and elaboration of the

Country Assessment (CA) process and standard instruments for use in the process.

Ibid