Development of Information Strategy for Poverty

Republic of Zambia

DEVELOPMENT OF INFORMATION STRATEGY FOR POVERTY

REDUCTION STRATEGY PAPER

(PRSP) IN ZAMBIA

A paper presented at the PARIS 21 Workshop for East Africa and

The Horn: 23-26 July 2001

“Supporting Policy with Statistics - Developing

a Strategic Approach”

Oliver J.M Chinganya

Central Statistical Office

Nationalist Road

P.O. Box 31908

LUSAKA

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INTRODUCTION

Zambia is preparing the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) which is intended to map out its development goals and indicate the strategies that will be employed to attain the set goals. The PRSP is being co-ordinated by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development (MOFED) where a unit has been set up to specifically manage the process of preparing the paper. The government realizes that strong pro-poor economic growth and continued strong social action programs are required to achieve sustainable poverty reduction. Sustained growth will subsequently yield desired results in terms alleviating poverty leading to improved well being of Zambians. It is therefore inevitable that relevant, accurate and timely data is made available to ensure the objectives of the PRSP are attained.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE PRSP

The preparation of the PRSP process in Zambia began with the preparation of the Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP) by the Ministry of Finance and Economic Development. This process involved interactive consultation with Government institutions, NGO’s, the Civil Society and other stakeholders. Submissions by various stakeholders were made at various forums on ideas of causes of poverty and strategies to reverse the situation.

Workshops were held for senior government officials and programme managers, including, MPs and Cabinet Ministers, to sensitize them on the process of the PRSP. It was important that all stakeholders feel that they own the idea and the process. During these workshops, issues were discussed on how best to prepare the Zambian PRSP and assessed what was required in order to make it demand driven.

In order to ensure a best paper was produced, working groups were formed, each looking at issues pertaining to the respective sector. The working groups were within the developed themes;

·  Economic theme

·  Social theme

·  Cross-cutting issues,

Under the Economic and Social themes the following groups were formed: -

·  Macro-economic

·  Agriculture

·  Tourism

·  Mining

·  Industry

·  Governance

·  Health

·  Education

Because of the importance of cross cutting issues, in the implementation of the PRSP programme, the following groups were also formed.

·  HIV/AIDS

·  Gender

·  Water and Sanitation

·  Energy

·  Environment and Natural Resources

·  Roads

From the discussions of all these groups, it was evident that data and information were

required in order to write an informative and comprehensive paper which would to make it responsive to the needs of Zambia.

Whilst in the process of preparing the paper the OECD countries and other international agencies formed the PARIS 21 Consortium with long term objectives of developing evidence-based culture for setting and monitoring policy and secondly, developing well-managed statistical systems, utilizing available resources effectively. These objectives play a complementary role in the development of a PRSP.

SADC/PARIS 21

In December 2000 the PARIS 21 consortium and the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in consultation with the Government of Zambia took the initiative of organizing a workshop in Zambia with the theme “Developing Partnership for Information needs of Poverty Reduction Strategies and other Priority Policy Areas”. This was part of the fulfillment of PARIS 21 objective. The workshop was attended by programme managers from Government and the private sector including NGO’s. It was also attended by international agencies, most of them represented by renowned persons. Also present were representatives of SADC member countries. Uganda in this respect was represented by an expert from the Poverty Unit. Some of the issues discussed at the workshop were:

·  The status of information requirements of PRSP

·  Current issues around the information Requirements and Poverty Monitoring

·  Priority Information Needs of sector ministries.

·  Information Needs of other stakeholders

·  SADC and other Regional organization information needs

·  Information Needs of Civil Society

·  Information Needs of the Private Sector

·  Experiences and progress in Poverty Monitoring.

·  Dissemination and Information Accessibility

·  Supporting Poverty Monitoring and Information.

The workshop concluded among other issues that information was required if the Countries developing PRSPs were to drive them forward. Integrated and up-to-date base which can easily be accessed was one of the approaches. Availability of relevant and timely data was another. It was also recommended that user-producer meetings should be enhanced in order to assess the data requirements.

As a follow-up to this meeting another meeting/workshop was planned to specifically look at the data requirements of the PRSP in Zambia.

THE PROCESS OF CONSULTATION IN DEVELOPING AN INFORMATION STRATEGY FOR THE PRSP.

The Central Statistical Office, which is the main government organ mandated to carry out all censuses and surveys and to organize a coordinated scheme of social and economic statistics relating to Zambia has to ensure that data is available. The OECD through Euro-stat and Central Statistical Office of Zambia, after consultations agreed that a feasibility study be undertaken as part of the work programme of following up on issues from the December 2000 meeting. This was aimed at making a significant contribution to current knowledge and practice in the production and use of comprehensive statistical poverty data.

A consultant was then engaged to undertake the feasibility/identification mission in Zambia. This mission was to culminate into a stakeholders workshop on the PRSP data requirements. Some of the issues the mission consultant was to look at were: -

·  To determine facts about poverty issues.

·  Examine basic information (concepts and definition of poverty data, problems regarding the production and use of statistical poverty data).

·  Data gathering.

·  Identify potential participants to be involved in the workshop in close collaboration with the CSO and Ministry of Finance and Economic Development.

PLANNING OF THE WORKSHOP

When the Mission Consultant came to Zambia, a series of appointments to meet various stakeholders both in Government and Private Sector including NGO were made. One-to-one discussions were made by individuals involved to assess, the institutional data requirements and obtain their perspective on poverty issues. Discussions also included the planning of the workshop on Data Requirements for the PRSP. After a set of meetings which included World Bank, EU, GRZ etc. the mission consultant reviewed the discussions with the PRSP Co-ordinator and the CSO group, all together. This was done to map out a strategy for the workshop which was being planned.

In concluding the mission, it was agreed that a workshop be held in April 2001 involving all stake holders and that the workshop should cover the following: -

·  A comprehensive analysis of the needs of all users (both potential and actual)

·  A comprehensive review of all types of poverty data currently available in the country.

·  An analysis of the major data gaps and methodological weaknesses

·  An analysis of where action is needed to strengthen the underlying data required for target setting, monitoring, and further policy making

·  A review of the areas where poverty analysis is weak or lacking consideration of what are the most appropriate institutional structures and processes for a sustainable poverty monitoring system. This included considering an appropriate set of forums to ensure continuity and a separate forum of producers, to ensure effective co-ordination and synthesis between the different approaches to collecting and analyzing poverty data.

Consultation for such a workshop was important as this would result in facilitating those working in different areas, with different approaches and methodologies to engage in dialogue in order to develop techniques to achieve better synthesis between their methods and sources. Secondly, it would foster a more effective and sustainable dialogue between users and producers, so that producers have a clearer idea of user’s needs, that users are better able to interpret the data and analyses which are made available to them, and consequently are better able to specify to producers what their needs are.

ZAMBIA PRSP DATA REQUIREMENT WORKSHOP PROCEEDINGS

(a) Policy Remarks

The workshop which was held in April 2001 attracted key stakeholders and because of its importance, Statistics South Africa was represented by its officers as observers (not in the strict sense). The workshop was opened by the Minister of Finance and Economic Development, and the Head of European Union Delegation gave a key note speech. The Minister in his speech emphasized a comprehensive review of the needs of users of poverty data. He further said that the data to be used in the PRSP must be supported by evidence based policies which must be growth oriented and politically implementable. These data need to have units and measurements that are technically appropriate.

The European Union Delegation leader raised concerns of information not penetrating to the ordinary people. He stressed that there is need to translate this information so that the ordinary people can benefit. He also noted that collection and analysis of data should be based on quantitative and qualitative approaches.

(b) CSO’s Position

Since the Central Statistical Office is the major supplier of statistical information operating under the Census and Statistics Act Cap 425 of the Laws of Zambia in this respective gave an overview of the Zambian Statistical System. It also highlighted the statistical products it produces with specific reference to poverty data. Thus, Economic and Financial Statistics, Social and Population, and Agriculture and Environment Statistics presentations were made providing the status of data available for the PRSP.

During the CSO paper presentations and plenary discussions, it was apparent that CSO had some inadequacy in collection of certain type of information. It was also clear that the analysis of data at CSO was not comprehensive. Further, it was evident that although CSO was the main central organ which is supposed to overall surprise the data collection including methodology it did not have administrative authority, more so after the re-structuring of government ministries. It was therefore recommended that the Zambia Statistical System should be reviewed in order for it to act as the Central agency to organize a co-ordinated system of social and economic statistics for Zambia. There is need for co-ordination of all the producers of data so that duplication of efforts is avoided and consistency is maintained in the statistical system. It was further suggested that a National Co-ordinating Committee on statistics be constituted in order to act as a policy body and over see the production of all statistics.

(c) Poverty Unit at MOFED

As mentioned earlier, the Poverty Unit at MOFED co-ordinates the preparation of the PRSP paper. The unit presented a paper on the overview and the current status of PRSP. In addition, the working groups and respective institutions presented papers also within the PRSP themes, as outlined earlier.

The presentation and follow-up discussions revealed the need for PRSP data to: -

·  Understand the status in terms of poverty and what data were needed.

·  Understand the relationship between sector interventions and poverty.

·  Monitor and evaluate the impact of intervention and the ultimate objective for PRSP.

Discussions also confirmed that the PRSP had brought an opportunity to prioritize the data requirements and created a stronger relationship between producers and users of information.

(d) Other Papers Presented

The private sector and the civil society separately presented papers on their perception of the PRSP. Both were of the view that there was still some work to be done especially in the area of data generation. However, in this regard it was felt that there was a lot of data that CSO had generated, the problem was that there was very little data mining being done. The situation is problem more compounded by lack of enough information on the availability of such data.

The donor/international agencies also gave their perception on the poverty reduction programme. Their concentration was on their programme, which played an intervention role in poverty alleviation.

(e) Papers on data production methods and procedures

Methods used to collect poverty related data were reviewed. The main methods discussed were those under taken by CSO – the usual classical quantitative methods and, the qualitative method, which uses the participatory approach, mainly by the Poverty Assessment Group (PAG). .

While both methods have their merits and demerits depending on the scope of the study, it was felt that it was important each one of them provides supplementary information and play a complementary role to further enrich the analysis. It was recommended that an integrated approach be adopted to enhance the understanding of the poverty situation.

Conclusion

The workshop participants concluded that there was need to co-ordinate the activities of various agencies dealing with poverty for effectiveness of poverty reduction. It was also recommended that data mining should be encouraged, as well as enhancing the analytical capability of poverty analysts, programmers and policy makers and statisticians. The following were set as a provisional agenda for the future activities after the workshop.

·  Taking stock of available data

·  Establishment of a body to oversee and provide guidelines to the production of statistics.

·  Establishment of Producer/Producer Committee and User/Producer committee.

·  Develop an integrated database for poverty statistics

·  Develop a system of disseminating data and information regularly.

Follow-up activities

Some follow-up actions on some of the issues above as recommended from the workshop have been made. The rigorous follow-up action is being made as regards the transformation of CSO into a semi-autonomous body. Also preparation for an integrated database are being developed with the support of World Bank i.e. the 2nd Generation Live database and the dissemination strategies have been developed and funds are being sought to implement the idea.

It is clear from the Zambian experience of involving policy makers, programme managers, major data users and producers in the process of statistical development that, statistical capacity building to support the PRSP planning and implementation will require the participation of all concerned at all levels. It is not a one person’s or institution issue but all stakeholders.

*** The End***

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