The Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock in Zambia in collaboration with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) organizes today a five-day CountrySTAT advanced administrator training workshop for members of the national CountrySTAT teams from Anglophone countries in Africa and the regional team from the East African Community Headquarters. The workshop will be held from 12-16 November 2012 in the premises of the Cosmic Executive Lodge hotel in Lusaka.

As you know, CountrySTAT is a web-based dynamic framework for capacity-building and dissemination of official statistics on food and agriculture at the national and subnational levels. It provides a single window, quickly and easily accessible on the Web that supports
direct access to quality statistical data with the aim to provide support for decision-making and to influence the formulation of development policies.

The CountrySTAT Team at FAO headquarters has made considerable efforts in providing technical support to countries and developing improvements to the existing system with the aim to enhance its functionalities. One of the main improvements is that CountrySTAT has been migrated to an open source technology platform called FENIX, which is an internet-based system which is cost-free and provides different modules matching different user requirements and is easily adaptable to support global, regional and national level projects and initiatives.

The objectives of the Workshop are to provide the participants with an advanced training on the new CountrySTAT System based on cutting-edge open-source technology FENIX. In particular, the workshop will focus on: (i) IT module and the new CountrySTAT system; (ii) Statistics module of CountrySTAT; (iii) Presentation of the draft communication strategy for CountrySTAT; (iv) Presentation and discussion on work plans for 2013; and (v) Brief presentation on the new FAOSTAT and Food Balance Sheets.

The workshop is expected to provide a platform for the participants to assess the current situation, identify possible gaps and future needs, contribute to the formulation of work plans for 2013 and to make recommendations to further promote the use and visibility of CountySTAT at regional and national levels.