C. Camarada (FAO): "Strategy to improve agricultural statistics is innovative"

The global strategy for improving agriculture and rural statistics is an "innovative partnership that we can see as one of the biggest efforts ever tried with the objective of improving agricultural statistics on a sustainable basis". These were the words of FAO Representative in Mozambique, Castro Camarada, during the "Regional Seminar on the Implementation of the Action Plan on a Global Strategy for Improving Agricultural and Rural Statistics in Africa" which ended this Friday (21/11). The seminar brought together 87 delegates from 34 African countries as well as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF), representatives of the African Union Commission (AUC), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). Representing Mozambique were the National Statistics Institute (INE) and the Ministry of Agriculture (MINAG). Also present were partners for the implementation of the strategy, namely the African Development Bank (ADB) and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

According to FAO Representative, in the opening session, this Monday (17/11), even though agriculture plays an "extremely relevant" role in fighting hunger and malnutrition as well as in eradicating poverty, "the quantity and quality of agricultural statistics have seriously declined throughout the last two decades".

The partners thus met for five days in Mozambique’s capital, Maputo, to define the future support and the speed-up of the implementation of the Action Plan for Africa, take appropriate measures and approach the needs in terms of technical assistance of the countries in the statistics sector.

In his intervention, the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Agriculture noted that statistics must be "properly detailed, exhaustive, relevant, reliable, consistent and convenient according to the needs of the users at different levels, including the district level" in order to be a "true basis for support of the process of decision making and implementation of agrarian strategies and policies".

In the same line, Castro Camarada stated that such data are "very important" as basis for the implementation of "efficient and relevant policies at international, regional and national levels" and mentioned examples like the "recent food crisis as well as the current debates around price volatility and impacts of climate change on agriculture and food security" that have "showed the shortcomings in the existing data on agriculture".

At the end of the seminar, the participants recognized the progress made in the implementation of the Action Plan, referring that the efforts towards resource mobilization shall be supported both at regional and global levels. Another final observation related to the crucial commitment of the governments to make the appropriate resources available for agricultural statistics. The countries were encouraged to be proactive in the approach of and search for technical and financial assistance of development partners and to push the implementation of the global strategy, more research in the sector of agricultural and rural statistics and more cooperation between the involved institutions.