PALI LEHOHLA | Statistics in a time of tumult is a Cinderella rediscovered

The world has been marked by tumult throughout history out of various driving forces, be they pestilence, disease or war. Today the world has entered the volatile, uncertain, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) milieu. This time around, change is driven by rapid advances in our ability to grasp the world in our devices of technology — yet inequality, poverty and unemployment persist.

The prospects for war, successfully held in abeyance for 79 years, now hover in our midst daily, like the Sword of Damocles. The turbulence in the Middle East and specifically between Israel and Palestine has intensified, and the 77-year history of the UN Security Council is as old as the conflict between Israel and Palestine. The Russian-Ukraine war has no end in sight. Climate change has entered the fray after we hardly survived Covid-19. This is a VUCA déjà vu moment.

To this end, the UNSC is reminded of its call when it was established in 1947. The marching orders were on the subject of peace after the horrendous two world wars. The charge for statistics as a holder of peace was to provide macroeconomic indicators that could inform economic, social and political systems of inherent risks of polarisation that could escalate to open war. The National Account was one of the most and first important ports of call.

Today we celebrate the durability of a conduit of trust — statistics — one which increasingly has found its place at the high table. A Cinderella rediscovered. We look back to 77 years ago when the UNSC Commission was born as one of three of the technical commissions established in 1947 at the end of World War 2. It has earned its stripes since time immemorial.

Thirty years since, we have been guided by the metamorphosis of a principle-based governance born in 1994. The UN Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics (UNFOPS) were adopted in 1994. The UNFOPS have proposed through the UNSC the establishment of a board that will act as a conduit of not only trust but of peace. In between these principles were a bigger mirror. Nothing becomes as big as the image of Ivan Fellegi, the renowned chief statistician emeritus of Canada, who had to look into the mirror he helped create. In the bad practice and violation of the UNFOPS in Canada in its Census of 2011 Fellegi could not hold back, and he jumped into the fray.

This is indeed the best of times for the subject of official statistics as it was born out of two world wars

He said: “In a communist regime, evidence doesn’t count and only ideology matters. I am fiercely devoted to evidence-based decision making, and how much that comes from my core nature or growing up in a regime where evidence was the least consideration, I cannot clearly say. It’s not to say that I don’t believe there is no room for political considerations in a democracy. There always is, but only after all evidence has been considered. One might say, ‘The evidence says this, but my value system says something else, so I am going with that.’ That is fine, but disregarding evidence altogether is very offensive to me. A government that decrees a voluntary census will not know which numbers are good and which are bad, so one must be very cautious about considering any such census information as true evidence.”

If by politics we adopt the definition of the late prime minister of Lesotho, Ntsu Mokhehle — who said “politics is an agreement of society on how it governs itself” — then the underlying infrastructure of the integrity of those agreements has to be its mirror. This definition of politics has generated a binding global agreement called the Sustainable Development Goals Agenda 2030. In Africa this definition has generated Agenda 2063 — the Africa we want as well as the African Charter on Statistics. The pan-African system created a momentum through its chairpersonship of SA named the African Symposium for Statistical Development (ASSD), which was accompanied by a vibrant Young African Statisticians programme.

The two agendas of Agenda 2063 and SDGs are marching on social, economic and political governance towards an objective. That makes the agreement of how society agrees to govern itself a value-laden endeavour.

To this end the two agendas centrally locate the governance of people and planet towards prosperity that leaves no-one behind. In their somewhat independent geneses but thematic interconnectedness, these two programmes have committed to have a twin that mimics their agendas. It is in this mirror that the protagonists of the agenda can continuously look for reflection for sanity and further guidance. And to check whether they remain true to the agreement of how they govern themselves.

Statistics is a conduit of trust. To reveal its empowering message and the profound enablement of executing its mission demands that those entrusted with this precious gift to people and planet appreciate that, while it is etched and born of science, its purpose is to service politics — “politics as an agreement of society on how it governs itself”. This is indeed the best of times for the subject of official statistics as it was born out of two world wars.

For the UN's mission to bring peace to the world, it has deployed statistics as a conduit of trust and an invaluable infrastructure for creating multilateralism and an essential ingredient of the SDGs. UNFPOS are higher-order tools of stewardship that are active for weaving a world order envisaged in the SDGs.

The quest for stewardship for statisticians is a classical Malvolio character who crystallises leadership and its roles. In Twelfth Night, or What You Will, William Shakespeare, through this Malvolio character, could have not articulated the challenge of leadership better: “Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.” The question is: which of the three characterised the statistician — and why?

The chief statistician who is not alert might bemoan the burden of measurement of MDGs and SDGs and be unhappy about being burdened with what they may perceive as Malvolio's notion of greatness thrust upon them. UNFPOS and the SDGs represent the convergence of greatness achieved, which is what raises a national statistician to the position of data steward regardless of their position in life.

Africa, as a continent that was colonised, has the deep scars of statistical evidence that prove the damaging and debilitating effects of slavery, colonialism and neocolonialist plunder. The historical design of the relationship rendered Africa a statistical misfit of the UN. And on the eve of the adoption of the UN’s SDGs, a successor to the Millennium Development Goals, this body reflected the following evidence about Africa.

Its population aged 10-24 years comprises 30% of its total, and those 0-24 years make up more than 60% of its total. Despite gains in parity at the primary level, secondary education is still a challenge for many girls, where access to education generally, and specifically to quality education, remains variable. Of the estimated 197-million unemployed people in 2012, nearly 40% were aged 15 to 24.

Six-hundred million productive jobs over the decade covering the onset of SDGs were required to absorb the then prevailing unemployment levels, whereby 60% of young people in developing regions were either without work, not studying, or were engaged in irregular employment.

In the decade that preceded the SDG era, 2000-11, almost 34% of women aged 20-24 in Africa had been married or in union before they reached 18, while 12% got into these unions before 15. Despite some indications of declines, Africa had 15-million girls aged 15-19 who give birth every year.

Grappling with the aftermath of Covid-19 pandemic, while Africa did not suffer as much as the expected mortality given its level of underdevelopment, its vulnerability makes it susceptible to the slightest of vicissitudes.

We must learn that the value we create we must keep and share, rather than share all and remain with nothing

Despite these challenges Africa remains hopeful. Interestingly in the joint study of the AU and the UN Committee of Experts on Public Administration, included in the study was the question of opportunities and challenges in the context of Covid-19.

In fact, African administrators showed that statistics and information technology have never been better positioned as during Covid-19. Thus, on the subject of Mokhehle’s definition of politics as an “agreement of society on how it governs itself” the appetite for statistics and technology has remained uppermost in terms of the report. As African statisticians we should grab this opportunity the tragedy of Covid-19 gifted us.

While Africa continues to battle with the hangover of the unfulfilled promises of the MDG era and the mounting demands of the SDGs, we continue to illustrate how our theoretical and practical modes of reason have consistently confirmed that our epic governance infrastructure derives from the science of measurement — statistics.

To this end, Africa can mention some advances in the midst of major setbacks. Africa contributed significantly in the early 1970s to the household budget surveys to enrich the UN Statistical System. More recently a presumed dying element of the UN Statistics System — the Civil Registration System — was resuscitated in Africa as a movement in 2009. It blossomed throughout the developing world of Asia and Latin America.

Africa, sadly, has now very little to show for this resuscitated value creation. The starts and stops that characterise Africa do not hold us in glory. We need to take umbrage in the words of poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when he said great men reached and kept their heights not by sudden flight but, while their companions slept, by scaffolding through the night. We must learn that the value we create we must keep and share, rather than share all and remain with nothing.

What we commit to in Africa has been illustrated by Benin, which took the charge on measuring governance with results that have shown great progress, thus breathing life into Mokhehle’s definition of politics — that which we agree to do as society. The Praia Group based in Cape Verde has demonstrated that the African Charter on Statistics holds meaning where countries can take on challenges to represent the continent.

SA, on the other hand, led the African Symposium for Statistical Development for a decade. Under this agenda, SA hosted the 57th ISI, which landed on the continent for the first time in its more than century-old history. The programme yielded as a legacy the Young African Statisticians programme, who should now acquaint and act on the Africa Peer Review Report on the United Nations Committee of Experts on Public Administration (UNCEPA) Principles that should give meaning to these young minds that face doom if nothing is done.

The report elevates the role of e-government and the national statistics system. This is not by mistake, as these well-positioned instruments of governance stewardship are poised to address policy deficits that manifest themselves in poor registration of vital events, bribery-infested governance, conflicts of interests, the re-emergence of pestilence and wars that are reflected in the report.

While Africa’s fortunes are sparsely distributed, few and far apart, it is also true that the spurts of energy are just as frequent and emerge with more force than ones that came earlier. The book by Ben Kiregyera, The Emerging Data Revolution in Africa: Strengthening the Statistics, Policy and Decisionmaking Chain, marks the spurts that come with stronger ontological epicentres of epistemological evolutions.

As a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, my charge is to strengthen our ontological epicentres by researching both the epistemological course that we followed and cause that prompted action. It is not acceptable that Africa in the 2010 Round of Censuses reached heights that it lost in the 2020 Round of Censuses. Then up to 49 countries undertook their census from a low of 38 in the preceding decade. Where did statistical leadership lose the plot that now we are likely to fall below the 2000 Round.

By convening fellow Africans to this well of research at the University of Johannesburg, it is now possible for Africa to reach heights, keep them and share them for the benefit of the UN Statistical Commission. Thus our mission as those privileged with responsibility of inquiry and the official statistics complex can truly claim to be a data steward.

• On February 26, former SA chief statistician Dr Pali Lehohla addressed the United Nations Statistical Commission (UNSC) in New York on the occasion of the UN Fundamental Principles turning 30 as global law. This is an edited version of the address.

• Dr Lehohla is a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, a research associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana.