The Value Of Statistics
By: Dr Mitonga Kabwebwe Honoré and Dr Isak NeemaTHE United Nations (UN) and the International Statistical Institute (ISI) have declared 2013 as the International Year of Statistics. This declaration is a worldwide initiative that is aimed at promoting the importance of Statistics in finding solutions to global challenges.
The celebrations will be held in many different events in 111 countries with over 1 200 international organisations, professional statistical societies, colleges and universities, primary and secondary schools, businesses, government entities and research institutes taking part. Statisticians work in many areas that touch our everyday lives, including medicine, economics, agriculture, business, law enforcement, weather forecasting etc. Hence, statistics is becoming more critical as academia, businesses and governments around the world come to rely on data driven decisions, greatly expanding the demand for Statisticians.
In an African context, millions of people still do not have a good understanding of the value of statistics as it remains an invisible science. In the last decades, there has been an increase in the demand for statistics to evaluate African’s developments. Preceding systems of the new programmes for Africa’s development like the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the strategy frameworks for poverty reduction and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) created new demands and frameworks to de-synthesise the demands for statistics.
It is against this background that African Statistics Day was adopted in May 1990 by the 25th Session of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) and the 16th Meeting of the African Ministers responsible for economic planning and development to be celebrated annually on the 18th November with an objective of promoting awareness among political decision-makers, private sector, civil societies and general public in the role of statistics in formulation of economic and social development policies, their implementation strategies and monitoring and evaluation. The statistical community in Africa has commemorated this day annually since 1993.
In Namibia, the government recognises the strategic importance of relevant, high quality and timely statistics for evidence-planning and decision making in order to successfully achieve the objectives of Vision 2030 by creating the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA) in 2011 through an act of parliament.
The priorities of NSA were aligned to be consistent with the government’s objectives over the next five years as outlined in the 4th National Development Plan (NDP4). In addition, NSA play multiple roles as sector leader for the National Statistics System (NSS) and a major producer of the country’s official statistics needed to report on Namibia’s progress. It is these roles that enable NSA to provide leadership and expertise in measuring policy impact and public sector performance. To date, besides other sectoral report, the NSA has successfully released the 2011 Population and Housing Census report and the much anticipated 2012 Labour Force Survey report.
Government institutions of higher learning such as the University of Namibia (Unam) and the Polytechnic of Namibia (Polytech) have established dedicated departments [Statistics and Population Studies (Unam) and Mathematics and Statistics (Polytech)] to train students in statistics and population studies at both under and postgraduate levels for the national and international market. This was in response to the demand for statisticians and data analysts, a demand which is expected to increase by 4.4 million jobs worldwide in the years ahead amid concerns that African students are not pursuing degrees in statistics in sufficient numbers to meet the demand and the developmental challenges Africa in general and Namibia in particular are facing.
The two institutions also offer tailor-made courses to upgrade and improve the analytic capacities of the staff in government agencies. Therefore, in recognition of this day, the Department of Statistics and Population Studies at Unam is planning to host a colloquium where lectures, postgraduate students and other statisticians from industry will present their work.
Finally in celebration of the International Year of Statistics, we call for efforts to enhance awareness of careers in statistics and related analytics fields among high school students in Namibia. There is also a need for systematic effort to document current and future workforce needs and assess the ability to meet these needs. Furthermore, there is a need for African statisticians and their developmental partners to work in close cooperation, maintaining and reactivate structures among statisticians established at the sub-regional and regional levels such as the Committee on Development Information (CODI) and the Advisory Board on Statistics in Africa (ABSA).
* Dr MITONGA KABWEBWE Honoré is a lecturer of Applied and Mathematical Statistics, Biostatistics and Epidemiology.
* Member of the American Statistical Association (University of Namibia). Dr ISAK NEEMA is Head of Department: Statistics and Population Studies (University of Namibia)