ADDIS ABABA, June 13, 2014—The World Bank provided a US$10 million grant from the Statistics for Results Catalytic Fund, to help the Government of Ethiopia increase the quality of its official statistics.
The Statistics for Results Project was approved by the World Banks’ Regional Vice President for Africa on May 30, 2014. The grant agreement for the project was signed today by Mr. Guang Zhe Chen, World Bank Country Director for Ethiopia and H.E Ato. Ahmed Shide, Ethiopia’s State Minister for Economic Development.
The project will support the implementation of Ethiopia’s National Strategy for the Development of Statistics. Specifically, it will help to meet Ethiopia’s rapidly increasing demand for good quality statistics, by enhancing the organizational, human and physical capacity of the Central Statistics Agency(CSA) thereby enabling it to produce and disseminate more reliable and high quality statistics. The project will modernize the CSA’s organizational and data development capabilities and infrastructure at different levels.
Furthermore, the project will improve the data management capabilities of key Government Ministries Departments and Agencies in the National Statistics System and help to accurately measure progress on Ethiopia’s Growth and Transformation Plan targets.
“Improving Ethiopia’s ability to produce quality data will contribute to sustainable development because data accuracy is not only key to evaluating the impact of development programs, it will also help to identify gaps and prioritize investment” said Guang Zhe Chen, the World Bank Country Director for Ethiopia”
The project is part of the World Bank Groups’ efforts to promote evidence based decision making, in line with its twin goals of reducing extreme poverty and promoting shared prosperity.
