{The Minister of Agriculture, Mukeshimana Geraldine, has revealed that statistics play a vital role in planning for agricultural projects to boost production.}
The minister made the remarks during her opening remarks at the 24th African Commission on Agricultural Statistics summit where she noted that timely and reliable statistics provide good planning premises for an efficient production system that supports food and nutritional security, poverty eradication and income diversification.
The forum centered around discussions on how to improve statistics. The minister said that agriculture in Rwanda provides 33% of the National Domestic Product as demonstrated in the report of Integrated Household Living Condition Survey (EICV4) while 72% of Rwandans are farmers.
During the meet, Attaher Maiga, the FAO Country Representative in Rwanda revealed that the organization he leads has prioritized the promotion of statistics and gathering of data that may contribute to the development of agriculture and healthy nutrition among others.
He stressed that the organization concentrates efforts in Africa since effective statistics would play a great role in agriculture development, a sector considered as a pillar of many countries’ progress.
“Many of African countries have not yet got the capacity of effectively using statistics in political monitoring and budget planning, ” he said.
Joseph Schimidhuber, the Deputy Director Statistics Division of FAO said that research has been conducted within 24 African countries in a program called “Strategy to Improve Agriculture and Rural Statistics”.
The National Director of the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda (NISR), Murangwa Yousouf acknowledged that with reliable statics, agricultural planning in Rwanda has greatly improved.
The four-day meeting is organized by the African Commission on Agricultural Statistics and takes place every two years organized by institutions in charge of statistics to improve statistics especially as a premise for the development of rural areas.
According to NISR agricultural production grew by 5% during the second season of 2015.
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