I spent the last week at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (Uneca) in Addis Ababa for the Ninth Statistics Commission for Africa (StatCom Africa) Session. It was a historic moment marked by a mix of achievement, separation and grief.

The first sitting of StatCom Africa was chaired by South Africa in 2008, and as the then Statistician-General of South Africa, I became the founding chair. Sixteen years later, at this ninth session chaired by Liberia, there was a sense of achievement, separation and grief. It was a commission of paradoxes.

Oliver Chinganya, the third director of the African Centre for Statistics (ACS), invited the African statistics elders to mark this pivotal moment in the history of statistics in Africa. He is now the outgoing director of ACS after nearly a decade of service. As he stepped down, he also arranged a posthumous award ceremony for the late Michel Mouyelo-Katoula, a doyen of statistical excellence in Africa. Thus, the ninth session of StatCom Africa was a moment of reflection on achievement, separation, and grief. I could not help but appreciate the collective presence of Africans at this significant session.

This is why. In 2005 at the United Nations, during discussions on the United Nations Housing and Population Census Principles and Recommendations, Uneca reported that there were no plans in place.

Grace Bediako, then Chief Statistician of Ghana, with whom I studied at the United Nations Regional Institute for Population Studies at the University of Ghana, and I, as Africans, felt disappointed and deeply ashamed as Africa’s premier institution declared there was nothing to report. This spurred me into action.

Nine months later, in November, we met in Yaoundé, Cameroon, where a unilateral declaration of independence from Uneca by African statisticians was drafted for adoption. I requested the floor moments before the declaration could be unanimously adopted, as the case for such a move had been strongly argued. I asked three times who Uneca was. Finally, it dawned on the group that Uneca was none other than ourselves.

At that moment of realisation, I persuaded my fellow Africans to allow me to put the matter on the agenda in my country and, if granted permission, to convene in January to chart the way forward. The African agreed.

Armed with the minutes, I returned home and secured a crucial meeting with Minister Trevor Manuel for guidance. He immediately called the newly appointed Executive Secretary of Uneca, Abdoulie Janneh, warning him of the impending challenges he was about to inherit.

January 30, 2006, two months later, became the set date for the African Statistics Indaba in Cape Town. Thus, the African Symposium for Statistical Development was born. At the inaugural symposium led by Manuel and Janneh, a resolution to revive the statistics function at Uneca was adopted, and as the chair of the symposium, I was mandated to execute this mission.

Resuscitating statistics at Uneca became a top agenda item at the African Ministers of Finance and Economic Development Conference in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, in March 2006. The conference endorsed the proposal. South Africa subsequently released me for two weeks to Addis Ababa to work on the Uneca statistics strategy.

I called upon Chief O.O. Ajayi, a veteran statistician and former head of the Federal Statistics Office of Nigeria, as well as Professor Ben Kiregyera, a leading statistician from Uganda. Kiregyera was unable to join as he was on a month-long mission in Mauritius. Ajayi and I collaborated on the strategy with Uneca officials, Dimitri Sanga and Awa Thiongane.

We presented the strategy, which Janneh immediately approved for implementation. He called me aside and said, "Pali, now that we have this, who will drive it?" I responded that South Africa's support was essential for implementing the strategy and that Statistics SA and I, as Statistician-General, were critical to its success. I promised to secure the right person for the task.

I contacted Kiregyera and conveyed that Africa needed him. Although he was two years away from mandatory retirement, making the appointment seem unattractive, and the UN Statistics Division in New York was unimpressed by such a short-term role, I argued for this "arranged marriage," which was eventually successful. Kiregyera established the ACS within a year of joining and pushed for the implementation of StatCom Africa, where I became the first chair.

The African Symposium for Statistical Development thrived, achieving the highest participation of countries in the 2010 Round of Censuses. Africans had arrived. South Africa hosted the first-ever International Statistical Institute session in Africa in 2009. We, as Africans, developed the Strategies for the Harmonization of Statistics in Africa.

The African Union, the African Development Bank and Uneca's statistics divisions collaborated more effectively. We were at our peak. Kiregyera's term ended, and he had prepared Sanga for succession, which proceeded smoothly. Janneh's time at Uneca also ended, and he was succeeded by Carlos Lopes.

However, Sanga was reassigned, creating a three-year leadership vacuum that impacted the statistical community. As this occurred, Kiregyera and I approached Charles Lufumpa, then director of Statistics at AfDB, and asked him to release Chinganya to lead ACS at Uneca. He was released.

Chinganya invited us to the ninth StatCom Africa, which was a profound moment of reflection on setting the agenda for the next generation of chief statisticians and leadership at the African Centre for Statistics that Kiregyera had established under Janneh. It was also a time to remember Mouyelo-Katoula, an esteemed African statistician.

The South African Statistician-General, Risenga Maluleke, who has been on this journey with me for 25 years until my retirement, and I were given the opportunity to reflect on Mouyelo-Katoula's life. Above all, it was about Africa’s development.

Held in Africa Hall, established by African leaders such as Haile Selassie, the voices of Africa’s ancestors seemed to be loudly speaking to us as we gathered in this newly renovated hall of leadership. Having been given the opportunity to play a role and continuing to do so for the development of statistics in our beloved continent can only augur well for the development of Africa.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of the Institute for Economic Justice at Wits University, and a distinguished alumnus of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.

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