The African Statistics Day coincided on November 18, 2020 with the 19th session of the National Statistics Council which was held in Yaoundé on the same day. Like the theme of the African Statistics Day: “Modernizing national statistical systems to provide data and statistics to support sustainable peace and development in Africa”, the forum chaired by the Minister of Economy, Planning and Territorial Development (MINEPAT), Alamine Ousmane Mey, are backed by modernization.
Thus, “the African Statistics Day takes place in a context where Cameroon shows a desire to modernize its national statistical information system (SNIS), itself supported by its national strategy for the development of statistics always to guarantee an evolution. coherent success towards the objectives of sustainable development and especially towards emergence ”, reports the state daily Cameroon Tribune on newsstands on November 19, 2020.
Alamine Ousmane Mey declares that “the role of the National Statistics Council at the local, regional and national levels will be strengthened in order to support the development process,” read the newspaper’s columns. He acknowledges that the Coronavirus has slowed the evolution of the national statistical information system.
Presented on November 18 to the members of the board, the repercussions of the Coronavirus “boil down to the postponement of certain scheduled activities, the production of the system and the creation of new statistical information needs, among others,” we read.
At the end of this work, MINEPAT told our colleague that the SNIS will have to face “the need to produce statistical data at the level of the Decentralized Territorial Collectivities to support the decentralization process; to strengthen the human, material and financial resources of the SNIS, a real obstacle to the achievement of certain objectives, among others ”.
