The Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Anim, has underscored the need to revolutionize Ghana’s national statistical system to ensure data-driven policymaking and people-centered statistics.
This comes as Ghana and Denmark signed a Memorandum of Understanding to deepen their strategic sector cooperation in statistics from 2024 to 2026.
Addressing stakeholders at the signing ceremony, Prof. Anim highlighted four key priorities – revolutionizing, recreating, reinventing, and reawakening the national statistical system.
He emphasized the need to integrate data across government agencies, ministries, and institutions to bridge the existing disconnect between data, policy documents, and implementation.
“We clearly see a disconnect at various levels within the data we work with, within policy documents in the country, and between data and policy documents,” Prof. Anim stated.
He cited the example of the recently announced “Planting for Food and Jobs Phase 2” program, which aims to benefit 2 million farmers, stressing the importance of reconciling such administrative data with existing statistics to enable effective evaluation.
The strategic cooperation with statistics, Denmark aims to facilitate data sharing across government entities, strengthening the linkages between research, statistics, and policy planning directorates within ministries.
It also produces disaggregated and people-centred statistics to inform targeted policies and interventions.
Prof. Anim outlined six pillars of people-centred statistics: data disaggregation, hopeful statistics that translate growth into poverty reduction, including vulnerable groups, measurement of climate change impacts, pandemic preparedness, and a holistic approach to quality-of-life indicators.
The Danish Ambassador to Ghana, Tom Nørring, commended Ghana’s efforts to harness the power of integrated data systems for enhanced decision-making and evidence-based policymaking.
Ambassador Nørring underscored the transformative potential of leveraging administrative data across government authorities and ministries. “Better data leads to better decisions. That is the true power of data,” he emphasized.
Citing examples such as integrating data from the Ghana Card with electoral processes, business registries, education, health, and labor market information, the Ambassador highlighted the “endless opportunities” for a national statistical bureau to produce insightful analyses to guide policies.
Richard Aniagyei, ISD
