UN launches portal to provide data on Africa’s SDG journey

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Seventeen regional United Nations entities, under Africa Regional Collaborative Platform (RCP), on Tuesday, unveiled the Africa UN Data for Development Platform, an online portal that brings together statistical data harvested across all countries on the continent.

According to the group, the platform would simplify the process of measuring and evaluating the progress on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in Africa.

This is the first time a platform would be launched to serve as a one-stop-shop repository that captures high-quality data and evidence on the 2030 Agenda and the SDGs from all the African countries.

It is also the first of its kind to raise the profile of statistical progress toward the African Union vision – Agenda 2063.

Speaking at the virtual launch of the platform, Director, Regional Bureau for Africa at the UN Development Programme, Assistant Secretary-General Ahunna Eziakonwa, said with barely nine years left to achieve the SDGs, making use of common and harmonised data is essential to accelerate progress.

According to Eziakonwa, who doubles as the Vice-Chair of the Africa Regional Collaborative Platform (RCP), the launch of the new platform marks a milestone in actions towards the Agenda 2030 and the African Union’s Agenda 2063.

“Reliable and collective data will allow all actors to make the best possible evidence-based policy action to accelerate the SDGs, strengthen collaboration, avoid unnecessary duplication and make sure that we can address gaps, really leaving no one behind,” she said.

She stressed that the new data portal looks into the 17 SDGs and breaks them down into their 169 targets and 231 indicators, allowing everyone to track progress at the granular level.

In his remarks, Vice President of Malawi, Dr Saulos Chilima, said, “Presenting comprehensive, practical data sets will especially help us, government civil servants, to monitor progress, make sound decisions, and evaluate outcomes and impacts. This data platform is a long-awaited online tool for us to carry out in-depth analyses and progress assessments at the target and indicator levels, and link them with our national development plans.”

On his part, the Director of the ECA Africa Centre for Statistics, Oliver Chinganya, said, “Africa is a continent with great potential and clear aspirations as articulated in the Africa Union’s Agenda 2063. The transformation requires quality, timely and disaggregated data to guide targeted investments and ensure that the desired returns in its human capital development, environmental sustainability, economic transformation and prosperity for all.”

Statisticians at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (ECA) had raised concerns that among the 169 targets set out in the SDGs only 30 per cent of them is quantifiable.

They argued that the online platform would propose target values for the unquantifiable targets by using a pragmatic and ambitious approach, saying it would identify the region’s outstanding countries and sets their average rate of change as the region’s target rate.

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Remarking on the initiative, the Regional Director ad interim of UNFPA East and Southern Africa, and OIBC 1 co-convener, Dr Bannet Ndyanabangi, said, “The aim is to reduce the burden on countries in terms of responding to data needs and avoid repeated data requests from various organizations. This portal brings fragmented data from member states into one place and this information can also, be used by UN agencies and other partners.”

Building on the existing infrastructure developed by ECA, the Africa UN data portal consolidates statistics from platforms and technological tools available at the UN entities.

The new data engine also gives users the ability to classify the statistics by various dimensions, such as the eight regional economic communities recognised by the African Union, least developed countries, landlocked developing nations, and oil-producing mineral-rich states.

Additionally, it repackages the data by key thematic issues. For example, users can categorize SDG indicators by agriculture, energy and health, allowing them to not only analyze the specific progress at the country level but also examine the convergence, similarities and differences among a variety of subregional blocs and topics.

The portal is open to all users, including policymakers, planners, programme managers, development partners, private sector organisations, civil society groups, academic institutions, researchers, students, media outlets and many others and can be used in progress reports on the SDGs and other sustainable development documents.

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