NAIROBI, Dec. 16 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations on Monday urged Africa to strengthen national planning systems in order to achieve their national development goals.
Sylvain Boko, principal regional advisor on development planning at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) told a forum in Nairobi that there is need for the continent to establish and strengthen the inter-linkages between statistics and national planning as a means of enhancing transparency and accountability within the context of national development policy framework.
"The effectiveness of national planning systems hinges largely upon the availability of quality and relevant data, including essential statistics related to important developmental benchmarks such as economic growth, poverty, taxes, trade, births, and deaths which, in the end, remain fundamental to the design and implementation of development planning processes that are economically transformative and sustainable," Boko said.
He was speaking during the international training seminar on strengthening the capacities of African governments for integrating accountability in development planning.
Kenya is among the five pilot African countries that will benefit from the training.
Boko said that within the last two decades Africa has experienced an increasing interest in and a return to national development planning.
"Many African countries have adopted long-term development visions and planning frameworks with far more ambitious growth and social development objectives, which have gone beyond the narrow objective of poverty reduction to encompass such goals as accelerated growth, employment creation, structural transformation and sustainable development," he noted.
