Technical aid in statistics

Between 2013 and 2017, I lived and worked in Burkina Faso as the Chief Advisor for the Swedish technical assistance project in statistics there. This was a cooperative government project between the National Institute of Statistics and Demography (INSD, Institut National de la Statistique et de la Démographie) of Burkina Faso and Statistics Sweden (SCB). A large part of the technical assistance was dedicated to the development and implementation of a multipurpose Household Budget Survey (HBS) with a panel structure to ensure a sustainable statistical production system. Therefore, before accepting the responsibility of the technical assistance project in statistics in Burkina Faso and, most importantly, taking a long leave of absence from my PhD studies at Uppsala University, I came to an agreement with the authorities at INSD (and Sweden) to include risk questions in the HBS in order to use these questions in my doctoral thesis and future research. It can be argued that seeking to gain experience and knowledge about data collection during the PhD studies creates a comparative advantage for ones future academic carrier. Using self-collected data for own research has three advantages that are intertwined: (i) the researcher has a better knowledge about issues concerning data limitation, (ii) the researcher can customize the survey in order to answer a well-defined research question and (iii) a large number of articles written by Swedish economists published in top economic journals use data that are collected by themselves.

One of the main challenges in Burkina Faso and many other sub-Saharan African countries is the reduction of poverty. In 2002, the government of Burkina Faso implemented the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP), which was a strategic vision to reduce poverty and increase economic development. In 2010, the country adopted a new strategic vision, which was more ambitious than the PRSP to reduce poverty. The Accelerated Growth and Sustainable Development Strategy (SCADD), among others, aimed to develop the backbones of accelerated growth, promote social safety, as well as take into account subsequent priorities in development policies and programs. However, to be able to implement and monitor the strategic areas of SCADD, there was also a need for statistics and a sustainable statistical system. The official statistics in Burkina Faso (and many other sub-Saharan African countries) has historically been limited and not reliable because of small sample size, reduced geographic variation, and lack of panel structure. This is because of the underdeveloped national institutions due to, for example, unpredictable or volatile aid flows. Many donors have inconsistent requirements or the aid is fragmented into many small projects. International institutions also crowd out or undermine local efforts to collect national statistics or the donors and recipients of national official statistics have different goals. Moreover, an evaluation conducted by Cameroon and Niger in 2009, the peer of the statistical system in Burkina Faso, concluded that highly well-educated and skilled statisticians exist in Burkina Faso, making it one of the best in the region. However, it also stated that there is a lack of development of statistical data because of limited data production, a lack of archiving and security policy of data, and imperfect coordination. So, in an effort to improve its official national statistics, Burkina Faso requested that the Swedish government, as a part of its bilateral aid program, should focus on improving and increasing the capacity and ownership of the National Statistical System (NSS). The argument was that the availability of official statistics is vital for the development of countries like Burkina Faso in monitoring poverty reduction and economic development.

SCB was chosen as a technical partner in a government-to-government agency project to provide technical assistance (i.e., transfer of competence and not cash transfers such as salary to statisticians, etc.). The project’s objective was to contribute to the development of a sustainable statistical system in Burkina Faso that facilitates decision making based on relevant and reliable statistical information that meets domestic demands (e.g., being in compliance with the Burkina Faso’s national statistical plan), is well-coordinated with other statistical projects (EU, World Bank, UNICEF, etc.), and supports and provides indicators for the implementation and the monitoring of the national development program, such as the Strategy for Accelerated Growth and Sustainable Development (SCADD) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). The specific project objectives were to assist in the development of prioritized statistical areas (economics, social and environment statistics); this includes the development of the statistical business register, and the improvement of gender, demographic, and environmental statistics. It was also to reinforce the general statistical capacities in terms of report writing and survey methodology courses, for example, and to reinforce the IT system at INSD and in the rest of the NSS, which will lead to the production of statistics that will satisfy the national and international needs to a greater extent. More specifically, a large part of the assistance was dedicated to the development of a multipurpose Household Budget Survey (HBS) with a panel structure to ensure a sustainable statistical production system. This HBS was a separate project within the technical assistance project.

The main objective of the HBS was to provide indicators on the poverty level and other factors needed to monitor whether Burkina Faso had achieved the goals of the development initiatives (e.g., SCADD and MDGs). However, through the panel structure of the HBS, it was possible to obtain consumption and expenditure patterns on a quarterly basis, which was valuable for the construction of national accounts. Since the HBS also collected local price statistics across all the 13 regions of the country for each quarter, it provided input for the consumer price indices. Previous attempts were made by Burkina Faso to implement household surveys. These were undertaken in 1994, 1998, 2005, 2007 and 2009. However these surveys were simplified in terms of data coverage, lacked a panel structure (in other words, being more concentrated on specific reference periods, for example three to six weeks) and were often implemented with some other external actor (e.g., the World Bank) that implied reduced ownership for the NSS. INSD’s and the rest of the NSS’s ambitions were to have relevant statistical data to enable policy makers to track indicators of national and international development programs over time. To be able to achieve this, they demanded an efficient survey program that reduced time from data collection to publication of official statistics, as well as a sustainable survey coordination that allowed for institutional capacity building within the country. Therefore, SCB’s role became assisting INSD in the development and implementation of a HBS. In this development phase of the HBS, some key areas were identified, such as including a panel structure to capture the dynamics of development (SCADD and MDG) indicators over time and a permanent and continuous survey with a core, annual and more-focused questionnaire, combined with rotating modules.

To our help in the development and implementation of the HBS, we also had access to skilled statisticians such as Thomas Polfeldt, Lars Lundgren and Roujman Shahbazian. We also received excellent technical support from the World Bank in the implementation of an agricultural module and in collection of consumption data.