South Sudan's English Daily Newspaper
"We Dare where others fear"
By Simon Deng
The transitional unity government has been urged to increase investment in statistics in order to drive policy planning and development in the country.
Ademola Olajide, the Country Representative of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) said on Thursday that investment in the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) and in an effective statistical data system is central to stimulating national development.
“We also need to strengthen the capacity of government and non-government institutions to use evidence for decision making, there is a lot of evidence that sits on the shelf in the university, National Bureau of Statistics that we have not been able to harness and apply to national development,” Olajide said during the commemoration of the 2024 World Population Day held within the University of Juba.
Robert Mayom Deng, the Vice Chancellor for the University of Juba said data generation is critical for evidence -based decision making, adding that educating the public on issues related to overpopulation is essential.
“If the population increases we will have problems of transport, water, shelter and more importantly food, and so government should create awareness about health reproduction related issues such as making youth be aware of sex education and family planning,” Deng said.
Augustino Ting Mayai, the Chairperson for the National Bureau of Statistics, said that high quality data is vital for evidence-based planning and decision-making, adding that he is deeply concerned with strengthening the national statistical system which is crucial in providing accurate data.
“The National Bureau of Statistics is now developing general data standards guiding all data producers across the country, some data are generated but often you would find some of this data not being of good quality,” Mayai said.
He disclosed that they are working closely with UN agencies such as UNFPA, United Nations Development Program (UNDP), UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the Ministry of Finance and Planning and all other agencies that support data generation and analysis.
The 2024 World Population Day was celebrated under the theme, “strengthening national statistical system to generate data and demographic intelligence for evidence- based decision making”.
