LESSONS TO DATE FROM THE
COUNTRY PROFILE PROJECT
Presented by
Antonio Pedro
Director
SRO-Eastern Africa
Objective of the presentation
To share a SRO perspective about the key
lessons learnt to date with the country profile
project with the view to finding pathways to
progress
Economic Commission for Africa
www.uneca.org
The situation room
• All SROs have embraced the country profile (CP) project and invested
time and energy to make it a reality: No question about it!
• The concept note approved during CoM 2013 informed the work on
CPs; and the “Morocco template” its design
• In September 2014, we agreed a division of labour (DoL) with HQ
Divisions (MPD, RIITD, SDPD, ACS and PIKMD) towards making the
CPs a DaO ECA enterprise: Mixed results on implementation as
reflected during CoM 2015 (To date, no country profile has all the
composite indices)
• Mixed results from member States too
• Other stakeholders (e.g. UNIDO Director of Research) called for
better definition of niche
Economic Commission for Africa
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"The idea of having a comprehensive yet concise
analytical and policy report covering short-term
economic performance issues and long-term
transformation questions is quite unique and
commendable. As the Concept Note states, while there
are many Country Reports being produced in Africa,
ECA’s country profiles will distinguish themselves by
focusing on policy analysis, regional integration and
economic transformation issues and forecasting and
risk analysis.”
Dr. Ludvico Alcorta,
Director,
Research and Statistics Branch of UNIDO
Economic Commission for Africa
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Managerial Issues
Economic Commission for Africa
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The case of implementation
• Not a single country profile has been published since
the start of the project over three years ago
• Even after three major meetings on the CPs, none of
resulted in the implementation of measures
resolving the structural impediments to the
production and publication of the country profiles: A
lot have to do with inadequate implementation of
the DoL agreed in September 2014
Economic Commission for Africa
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Do we need to change the focus beyond datarelated issues?
Should we have a more practically-minded focus on
process related organisational issues to identify key
responsibilities, anticipate potential and current
obstacles, set timelines, and crucially, organise
dissemination so member states are aware of these
new products?
Economic Commission for Africa
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Making the DoL and DaO work
Each country profiles requires inputs from different
parts of the house. For instance, the inclusion of the
gender index, the regional integration index, the
evaluation of the quality of official statistics, the
forecasting implies a high degree of coordination of
outputs between Addis and the SROs
Economic Commission for Africa
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Towards a smooth, rapid publication process
• If the CPs are to be attractive, data-dependent,
competitive documents , then the publication
process must be as efficient and as fast as possible:
This has not been the case to date!
• Issues of out-of-date data: They make the CPs
irrelevant
Economic Commission for Africa
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The Demand Side
Economic Commission for Africa
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Member States are not yet fully on board
So far, despite the best efforts of our offices to promote
the CPs, the process has been characterised by a
notable lack of demand or interest for CPs from the
member States
Economic Commission for Africa
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More effort is needed to delineate a unique product
• ECA’s CPs have to be unique and stand out from what
is currently in circulation with a clearly defined niche.
• Dr Alcorta (UNIDO) raised three key areas where
more focus is required:
a) frequency - commenting on the difficulty of using
quarterly documents to measure long term shifts in the
structure of the economies
b) Title - putting forward a more appropriate title for the
Country Profiles
c) Long-term view - a different focus on more long-term
structural indicators
Economic Commission for Africa
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The case of National Institutes of Statistics
• SRO engagement with National Statistical Offices (NSOs) at
the country level not straightforward especially outside the
SRO host country
• Not easy to have a comparative advantage: (e.g.US$ 90
million donor support to statistics in Rwanda)
• Limited financial and technical resources of NSOs
themselves limits their interest and makes them unwilling
to share data
• Difficult to form National Data Working Group (NDWG) incentive structure from the govt. perspective?
Economic Commission for Africa
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Would More Resources Help?
Economic Commission for Africa
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Site visits means more credible CPs
• To carry out CP-inspired dialogues with member states,
engage in 'data collection', there is need for an explicit
budget attached to the execution of the CPs: Technically in
the current ppb fascicle this is not possible (The CPs are
classified as recurrent publications)
• Staff members are being asked to write authoritatively on
countries: To do so, they need to visit them!
• Proper ‘fact-finding’ missions need to be established?
Economic Commission for Africa
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Composite indexes, the big conundrum
• While potentially very attractive features of the CPs, the
composite indexes currently being developed are extremely
data-intensive
• The Oxford Economics forecasting model proposed by MPD
requires 514 indicators for over 30 years. Compiling such a
dataset and maintaining the model for all African countries
is a mammoth task
• Clearly, based on the DoL, we need a way forward!
Economic Commission for Africa
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Staffing constraints: The eternal problem?
• The SROs need statisticians in their staff mix
• The same applies to well-qualified G-staff: This
is vital for the sustainability of the data
management process
Economic Commission for Africa
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The Role of training to address staffing
constraints
• One week training courses are rarely sufficient to change the
basic skill-set – things like modeling or the maintaining of data
bases requires a significant prior investment in education by
staff. Short courses will not resolve this problem.
• Some reallocation of staff to different tasks required?
Economic Commission for Africa
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Towards the Solution: The Action
Pact
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A sample for day two
• Establish a Central Coordination Team at HQ under the two DESs
• A comprehensive and objective assessment of staff capacities in the
SROs by HR
• Mainstreaming observations by Third Parties on the substance of the
CPs
• Two products: A concept note-compliant product and a lighter datasheet for high-level policy makers?
• Based on the CPs, a “State of structural transformation” plenary in
every ICE?
• Exploiting better our comparative advantage - Stressing the Subregional Dimension?
Economic Commission for Africa
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