Statistics agency in Sh390m deal with Swedish partner

The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) has signed a Sh390.4 million financing deal with Statistics Sweden in a project that will include training of staff, institutional capacity building as well as generation of statistics on economy, agriculture, environment and gender.

“This technical assistance, which will run for four years, will be used for institutional capacity building and improving on quality of data collected and disseminated using the latest technology, tools and procedures that meet global standards,” said KNBS Director General Zachary Mwangi.

He said KNBS is improving on its institutional capacity ahead of the ongoing review of the Statistics Act 2006, to take care of requirements by county governments, a process he says would be completed soon.

The bureau is the principal agency of the Government when its comes to collecting, analysing and disseminating official statistics.

“We are in the process of reviewing the Statistics Act to meet the requirements of both the national and devolved systems of Government. This is why we need this technical assistance to enable us to address the data gaps and meet user requirements by conducting various surveys and census,” said Mwangi.

The Swedish technical assistance will also include improvement in how KNBS collects, communicates and disseminates data, as well as improve the competence of its staff. The project will be monitored and evaluation done after every four months.

Technical support

“We anticipate this technical assistance will enable accessibility to our data sets and generation of quality and live data that is timely and can be useful for decision-making. While our data has holes in it, we need to establish timeliness, quality and be able to defend it,” said Prof Terry Ryan, KNBS board chairman.

In its 2013-17 strategic plan, KNBS aims to address data gaps and meet the needs of users including ministries, departments and State agencies.