Windhoek, Namibia -  FAO and NSA are collaborating to develop Namibia’s Strategic Plan for Agricultural and Rural Statistics (SPARS) as the country prepares to conduct its agriculture census.

 

If Namibia wishes to transform her agricultural sector and realise its full potential to help achieve food and nutrition security, a shift towards timely and accurate statistical data will be a key tool in ensuring that this ambitious goal is realised.

 

This sentiment was echoed today at the signing ceremony of the development of the Strategic Plan for Agricultural and Rural Statistics (SPARS) between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA). The signing ceremony for SPARS, comes at a time when demands for agricultural statistics are increasing not only at national level but also at regional and international levels.

 

At national level, an increasing need to harmonize and consolidate agricultural statistics in the country has become a matter of developmental significance as data is widely viewed as an accelerator for more targeted agricultural interventions. This aspect was highlighted by Alex Shimuafeni, the CEO and Statistician General of the NSA.

 

“Namibia is shifting towards leading the integration of the fusion of technology and data, and digitalization, which will involve embarking on a radical statistical revolution that could open space for open data policy to better manage public data source integration. To enable the country to meet growing demand for high quality of close to real time and accessible agricultural statistics, there is a need to develop statistical strategies that will aid as planning and implementation tools.”

 

 

The agricultural sector remains an important sector in Namibia, sustaining thousands of livelihoods by supporting directly and indirectly 70 percent of the total population, most especially rural households. The provision of reliable and timely data for informing national policies in the agricultural and rural sectors therefore prompted the need to have a strategic plan for agricultural and rural statistics (SPARS) in place.

 

“The project aims to put in place SPARS implementation mechanisms and a long-term and sustainable funding for agricultural statistical system,” said Ms. Farayi Zimudzi, the FAO Representative in Namibia.

 

“The project will also contribute in the long run to improving the availability, quality and accessibility of data and statistics pertaining to the food and agriculture sectors and all underlying dimensions including environmental, social, economic, and governance aspects of the sector.”

 

Zimudzi noted that this assistance is in line with FAO Namibia’s Country Programming Framework (CPF) under Government Priority 1: Strengthened policy, legal, strategic and institutional frameworks for agriculture, fisheries, forestry, food security and nutrition and Outcome 5 – Technical Quality, Statistics and Cross-Cutting Themes (climate change, gender, governance and nutrition) under FAO’s new Strategic Framework 2022-2031.

 

 

The SPARS project will be managed and operated by FAO Namibia in partnership with NSA and other key stakeholders (public, private and civil society) in the agriculture sector, including the Ministry of Agriculture, Water and Land Reform. The project will be implemented over a period of 18 months (01 July 2022 to 31 December 2023) at the cost of USD 216,000 (around NAD 3,400,000) and is expected to:

 

• Guarantee a better coverage for agricultural and rural statistics for the country,

• Respond to regional and international requirements,

• Ensure that mechanisms for a good integration of the agricultural sector into the existing and future strategic plans of the NSA are in place

• And improve administrative data for agriculture statistics by improving the presentation, consistency, quality and accessibility.

 

Additionally, one of the important outputs of the SPARS project includes supporting Namibia’s capacity to plan and mobilise funds for an agriculture census through the development of a project document for the Namibia Agriculture Census. The census will provide certain types of data as part of an integrated set of data on food and agriculture as a means to support Namibia’s decision-makers in matters related to food, agriculture and rural development.