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Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics

Develop awareness and build the skills for data analysis and dissemination

The ultimate goal of national statistical programmes is to provide the society with high quality and timely data to enable policy analysis and monitoring, accountability reporting, evidence-based decision-making and research. Improving skills of the national counterparts in data processing and management is a fundamental prerequisite for the success and sustainability of any activity aiming at strengthening statistical systems and specifically for the implementation of the 50x2030 Initiative.

The Global Strategy provides countries with technical assistance to ensure that the statistics produced meet the growing demand from the user side and are used successfully as information base to produce investment planning, policymaking and monitoring and research.

Activities are designed and implemented to ensure that that countries have the pivotal technical capacity to process, analyze and disseminate according to best standards. These include:

  • Trainings on the use of statistical software such as SPSS, Stata, or R  software needed to produce basic descriptive statistics and graphic representations; edit, clean, impute and process survey microdata; and analyze and aggregate survey microdata;
  • Training and support to countries in developing, implementing and maintaining Computer Assisted Personal Interviewing (CAPI)-based surveys, a fundamental tool for a more cost-effective process that, at the same time, ensures the quality and timeliness of statistical products;
  • Support to countries in increasing access to data and statistics, developing awareness on the importance of designing and adopting statistical dissemination strategies and programmes for national statistical offices, while building the essential knowledge and technical skills for setting up and implementing a comprehensive data dissemination and preservation programme;
  • Support to countries in computing timely and reliable indicators required for their national development policies and by international and regional frameworks, such as SDG indicators and CAADP for Africa;
  • Technical assistance to countries in developing the classification of farms by pre-defined dimensions and presenting the benefits of producing economic, social, gender indicators by farm types, to enable analysis of the structure, performance, sustainability and transformations of farms by farm type;
  • Support to countries in compiling their national food balance sheets (FBS) using the recommended methodology; methodology developed during the first phase of the Global Strategy and in producing useful indicators for data-oriented food policies, such as Dietary Energy Supply (DES), import dependence rate, calculation of the prevalence of undernourishment (PoU) at national level.
The Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme (CAADP) is Africa’s policy framework for agricultural transformation, wealth creation, food security and nutrition, economic growth and prosperity for all. The CAADP Malabo declaration advocates for good data and accountability for results, calling for efforts at continental, regional and country levels need and investments in data systems. Countries are required to better address the data availability challenge in the framework of the CAADP Biennial Review Process. The Global Strategy supports countries in computing timely and reliable indicators required for measuring the targets sets by the CAADP and other international frameworks. Activities are implemented in systematic partnership with regional support systems, national CAADP focal points and inter-institutional teams bringing together ministries of agriculture and line ministries, private sector, farmer organizations, development partners and other civil society organizations) in charge of taking leadership to steer and coordinate the CAADP implementation at country level.