IMF Builds Statistical Capacity in Africa
| Author | Tom Morrison |
| Position | IMF Statistics Department |
The institution has been assisting countries that require greater attention and technical assistance in enhancing capacity building in macroeconomic and financial statistics, and in socio-demographic statistics.
The project-based on the IMF's General Data Dissemination System (GDDS) framework-was funded by the U.K. Department for International Development (DFID). The $8 million three-year project, implemented jointly by the IMF and the World Bank, will be completed September 30, 2009.
The project-referred to as the Phase II project-builds on the results of the DFID-funded GDDS Phase I project (2002-2006) for 15 Anglophone African countries, which led to all but one country participating in the GDDS-a general framework established in 1997 to guide participating countries in developing sound statistical systems as the basis for the provision of data to the public. The Phase II project has been expanded to 22 sub-Saharan African countries.
An innovation of the Phase II project is its focus on a modular approach for technical assistance delivery. Each module brings together five or six countries with similar needs in the same areas of statistics. The modules were implemented in steps, beginning with an opening workshop for the participating countries, during which they defined their own action plans that outlined the objectives of the country, the issues to be addressed, the timetable for progress, and the expected outputs.
The workshop was then followed by a series of 2-4 missions over 18-30 months to help the countries implement their action plans. Several mid-stream regional workshops were also held to address common issues that arose in the course of implementing the modules.
An important advantage of the modular approach has been that the small groupings of countries with similar needs have facilitated the sharing of knowledge and lessons learned.
A project based on the GDDS framework offered a natural opportunity for collaboration between the IMF and the World Bank, as it includes both macroeconomic and socio-demographic statistics. In order to implement the project effectively, the two institutions agreed at the beginning of the project to a common structure, format, management, and reporting system for the provision of technical assistance.
The IMF and World Bank have each conducted seven modules. The IMF modules...
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