Anglophone Africa

As a successor to the GDDS project for capacity building in statistics in Anglophone Africa, a new project has been approved by DFID for the three- year period 2006-2009. It is budgeted at some $8 million and is executed jointly by the IMF and the World Bank. Country coverage has been expanded to 22 countries, i.e. all of Anglophone Africa.

The purpose of this project is to continue to bring about improvements in the quality of key economic, financial, and socio/demographic statistics and to enhance capacity of national statistical systems. Like the preceding General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) project for Anglophone Africa, the new project will promote the use of the GDDS as the framework for these improvements. The project will focus on results and regional interaction, by offering defined technical assistance (TA) modules, which can be planned, implemented, and assessed in a coordinated way for about five countries at a time, which share similar needs. The project will be linked with the Marrakech Action Plan for Statistics and key activities, including the Accelerated Data Program.

The project focus is on short to medium-term improvements in data quality in the main data areas covered by the GDDS. As has been shown from the preceding project, however, the GDDS is also an important component in the development and implementation of national strategies for the development of statistics (NSDS). There are also links with other components of MAPS, including the Accelerated Data Program (ADP).

The Fund and the World Bank will initially propose a total of some 14-16 TA modules, which will cover frequently requested TA in key areas of official statistics and which result in specific and critical improvements in capacity. A module is a pre-defined cluster of technical assistance activities, in which TA providing and receiving agencies commit in advance to achieve a specific and clearly defined result within a manageable timeframe (typically 18-30 months). They will address capacity building needs that typically occur in the countries of the region, with special regard to low capacity countries. Over time, additional modules will be offered. Traditional stand-alone bilateral TA, outside the modules, will play a limited supplementary role.

The project countries are: Botswana, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, The Gambia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. The more advanced countries in this group may participate in a double role, receiving and providing expertise.

Immediate beneficiaries of the project are the government agencies that produce official statistics, typically the national statistics agency, the ministry of finance, other ministries in charge of economic affairs and development, line ministries in charge of health, education, labor and other social and demographic programs, and the central bank. Indirect beneficiaries are the members of the data user community, such as national policy makers, program administrators, civil society, and foreign investors and donor agencies.

As the predecessor project, the new project will provide for close with regional institutions with interest in statistics development, so as to leverage their specific expertise and to promote regional ownership. The modular approach is expected to facilitate this cooperation, by providing a structure to which other organizations can relate more easily. They include the African Development Bank (AfDB), the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the Forum for African Statistics Development (FASDEV), the Macro-Economic and Financial Management Institute (MEFMI), the South African Customs Union (SACU), the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM), and the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA).

Modules derive synergy from the combination of traditional forms of TA delivery:

Mode of TA delivery	Peripatetic or single expert visits	Regional workshops/ country visits	Country teams interacting	Regional Advisor support	Output agreed and validated
Modular approach	•	•	•	•	•
Stand-alone TA	•			ο	ο
Training seminars		•	ο

• - Normally part of delivery, ο - Occasionally part of delivery

Modules will be implemented in steps. Typically, a module would start with a regional or sub-regional workshop for about five participating countries, followed by up to three bilateral expert assignments to each country, and usually conclude with another regional event. Additional workshops may be arranged in mid-stream, usually in conjunction with bilateral expert visits. Some modules may require more inputs, others less. The recipient countries are expected to define their own deliverables within the given context of the module.

GDDS: The Fund's GDDS is a framework for statistical development which provides guidance on good statistical practice, supplies tools to diagnose areas of the statistical system that require priority attention, and establishes processes to aid in the formulation and implementation of short-and longer-run development plans.
Metadata: GDDS metadata describe a country's current statistical practices and plans to make improvements in these practices, together with the associated need for assistance.