A five-day conference on recent developments in Applied Statistics ended in Yaounde on March 18, 2016.
Experts at the Cameroon International Conference on Recent Developments in Applied Statistics, (CICDAS), says governments of the Central Africa Sub-region should accept modern and faster forms of collecting, analysing and diffusing data. The information was echoed at the end of a five-day international confab organised by the Central African Economic and Monetary Commission, CEMAC, in partnership with the Bank for Central African States, BEAC, the Sub-regional Institute of Economics and Applied Statistics, ISSEA and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, UMBC.
The use of big data is in vogue and experts see in this concept as means to modernising the collection of data surveys in Africa, especially countries of the Central African Sub-region. Big data makes it possible to gather data frequently, analyse it faster and provide it for development in due time. The cellphone is a huge tool and experts urge National Institutes of Statistics to work with mobile telephone providers to reach the population quickly and on time.
It is proactive, more efficient and less costly, experts noted. « It is important for decision-makers to have a good account of living conditions, be they animal or human to be able to take good decisions. We lack a better understanding of the potential we have, » said Dr Moustapha Pemy, a conference partcipant.
Speakers at the close of the event, from the Director General of ISSEA, Thierry Mamadou Asngar, to the UMBC Delegation leader, Bimal Sinha and the representative of the Governor of BEAC, Guy Serge Gaombalet, all agreed that data collection in CEMAC countries was deficient.
Governments invest a lot to carry out census and it takes many years to fully understand the results. Such data becomes stale with little effects in terms of decision taking when finally it is released, experts stated. Speakers however expressed the desire to use new tools for data collection as a means of improving development of the economic bloc.
