In every country that is partner of CountrySTAT, a so-called Technical Working Group meets regularly to review data quality. Representatives of the key statistical agencies harmonize data and make it coherent and consistent with FAOSTAT before uploading new data to the system.

From April 15 to April 19, the Permanent Secretariat for Coordination of Agricultural Sectoral Policy of Burkina Faso hosted the first Technical Working Group Meeting, held in Ouagadougou. The overall objective of this working session of the TWG was to have an updated operating system, distribution and archiving of statistical data and metadata on food and agriculture.

17 representatives from the Directorate General for the Promotion of Rural Economy and other governmental institutions involved in statistical data collection participated at the Technical Working Group Meeting.

The opening ceremony of the workshop was chaired by the Director of Forecasting and Food and Agricultural Statistics (DPSAA) who, after welcoming the participants, stressed the importance of this project through its main objective which is to have a one-stop center for food and agricultural information. Furthermore, he underlined the importance of food and agricultural statistics in decision support and urged participants to apply for better ownership of the system for a quantum leap in data dissemination.

At the end of the workshop, all matrices were successfully updated with recent data and all statistical data structures are collected and validated.