The Southern African Development Community (SADC) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) organized a five-day regional CountrySTAT training for SADC member-states  in Windhoek, Namibia.

This technical training was provided for the national management of SADC member states (Directorate of Agricultural Statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture and National Statistics Institute), as well as for the regional team at SADC headquarters.

It provided an excellent opportunity for members of SADC to work together under the direction of the FAO Headquarters based CountrySTAT team with support from the SADC Secretariat.

The objective of the training was to provide participants with skills on how to use the new CountrySTAT system for the upload and dissemination of official food and agriculture data.

Presentations focused on the four “pillars” of CountrySTAT, namely:

• IT module and the data-uploading process;
• Statistics module and data harmonization process;
• Communications strategy;
• Country coordination activities.