For a better monitoring of the Agricultural Policy of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA), a Regional Agricultural Information System (SIAR)  was developed, with the aim to provide data on major agricultural sectors and agricultural markets. This system intends to respect data quality requirements based on international standards to better assist the international negotiations.

The Commission of the West African Economic and Monetary Union (UEMOA) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), have organized a Regional Technical Group (RTWG) in collaboration with of the National School of Statistics and Applied Economics (ENSEA), with the main objective to create a regional framework for the coordination of a statistical system on agriculture, food and the rural sectors.

The workshop  focused on short-term needs to have a minimum basis of comprehensive and harmonized statistical data among the 8 participating countries of UEMOASTAT / CountrySTAT. Working sessions were organized around the following themes:

• improving data harmonization and understanding the impact of missing data on data quality,
• definition of a harmonized framework for the missing data treatment,
• identification of priority areas for the data quality improvement and their availability as well as the analysis of the indicators consistent with international standards that meet the needs of the SIAR,
• definition and adoption of a list of analytical indicators to evaluate the agricultural performance and living conditions of households in order to facilitate the monitoring of the Common Agricultural Policy (PAU).

The workshop allowed the participants to become acquainted with the overall context of SIAR, understand the situation of the automatic data aggregation at the regional level and understand the problem of missing data. Finally,  they had a chance to discuss and adopt a methodological guide on the missing data imputation.

The workshop was held in the premises of the National School of Statistics and Applied Economics (ENSEA) from 3 to 7 June 2013 in Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire.”