Eurostat supports the European Community's development cooperation goals in Eastern and Southern Africa by providing advice to the European Commission's external services and through them to the European Community's regional and national development partners.
Eurostat's statistical advice focuses on European Development Fund (EDF) regional integration programmes that operate in partnership with three regional organisations, COMESA, EAC and SADC.
Statistics objectives
The Eastern and Southern Africa 10th EDF Regional Indicative Programme for 2008-2013 covers COMESA and EAC. It notes that:
- The preparation, implementation and evaluation of regional development policies should be informed by relevant and good quality statistics which are widely disseminated. If the statistics are absent or are of poor quality, the information gap should be addressed. Although much improved in recent years, the quality and comparability of macroeconomic and other data for regional integration is not yet sufficient.
The 10th EDF Regional Indicative Programme for SADC identifies statistics within its cooperation strategy for Southern Africa regional integration:
- Relevant, timely, accurate and comparable statistical information is essential for planning, policy formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of SADC integration activities. The strategies for achieving this goal focus on developing a legal framework for regional co-operation in statistics; the harmonization of statistical information; collating, processing and disseminating official statistics; developing indicators for monitoring and evaluating regional integration; and building capacity for national and regional statistical systems.
EC partnership in statistics with the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) and the East African Community (EAC)
COMESA 19 member states: Burundi, Comoros, the D.R. of Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Libya, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Rwanda, Seychelles, Sudan, Swaziland, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. (Egypt and Libya are not ACP countries).
EAC 5 Member states: Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda
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EC partnership in statistics with Southern African Development Community (SADC)
SADC 15 Member States: Angola, Botswana, D.R. Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
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