Government Statistician, Prof. Samuel Kobina Annim has cautioned against the formulation of policies which are not backed by data.

According to him, the implementation of interventions by governments may fail to live to its expected outcome if the country does not make data-driven decisions.

Speaking at the 2024 Africa Statistics Day, Prof. Annim explained that the use of tailored statistics in each sector of the economy will be crucial in the design and implementation of successful interventions.

“If we continue to make decisions at the national level and at the regional level, and we are not focusing on granular data, it's inhibits our ability to achieve the success that we want.”

On the need to adopt tailored data sets to improve the education sector, he noted that “historical data, in this case, education, should be the basis for forming decisions post 2030 when the education strategic plan has ended.”

“So historical data are critical,”he emphasized.

He called on the public and private institutions to collaborate with the Ghana Statistical Service in developing a solid data bank for the country.

“The third issue that we've put out there is that private institutions, other MBAs, hold a lot of data set, and today, we've demonstrated it, and we are calling on all Municipal and District Assemblies to come join Ghana Statistical Service so that we can have a pool of data to inform the success of current policy interventions.”

The African Statistics Day is commemorated annually to deepen public awareness of the significant role statistics play in all aspects of social and economic life. 

With a focus on education, the 2024 edition was held on the theme; Supporting Education by Modernizing the Production of Fit-for-Purpose Statistics.