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Sustainable development project launched

 

European Union Ambassador Michael Doyle

Limpho Sello

THE UNITED Nations Development Programme (UNDP) Officer in-Charge and Senior Economic Adviser, Asha Khannan says the country needs to work harder to overcome several challenges ranging from weak statistical capacity, lack of latest data to effective monitoring and reporting systems to inform policies.

Ms Khannan said this during a recent ceremony where the Development Planning Ministry partnered with the European Union (EU) and UNDP to launch the Lesotho Data for Sustainable Project (LDSP).

The LDSP is aimed at assisting government in the collection, analysis and dissemination of development data and building institutional and technical capacities for the monitoring and evaluation of development programmes and effective public management systems.

The Project will improve development outcomes and governance by strengthening the National Statistical System (NSS) to meet the user needs in a more coordinated, synergistic and efficient manner.

“Lesotho, like several other countries in the African region, is facing several challenges such as weak statistical capacities, lack of latest data and effective monitoring and reporting systems to inform policies. This binding constraint became evident in the process of Millennium Development Goals (MDG) monitoring and reporting, the recent National Strategic Development Plan (NSDP) 2012/13, and 2016 /17 review,” Ms Khannan said, adding, reliable, up-to-date, disaggregated data are key requirements for effective evidence-based policy formulation.

“UNDP supports production of various research reports at the global and national level.

“Lesotho has over the years, shown little or no improvement in its rankings due to failure to provide requisite evidence.”

She said the Lesotho MDG status Report 2015 which was launched last week, highlighted the lack of data as one of the glaring weaknesses and as a result statistics from 10 years ago were still being used to reflect some of the current challenges such as unemployment.

“This does not only distort the current national status and information but also compromises the national ability to design appropriate policies and strategies to address the socio-economic challenges facing the country.

“The UNDP is therefore pleased to have been a part of the discussion on addressing the weaknesses and building up the national capacities for data collection, analysis, monitoring and reporting.

“Besides the MDG Report, the UNDP Human Development Report is another publication, which is highly dependent on the availability of robust data at national level, for assessing the country’s progress in human development and for cross-country analysis of the country’s Human Development Index ranking, among other things,” Ms Khannan said.

She said Lesotho had only registered marginal gains, moving just 10 places over a 20 year period despite huge investments in the health and education sectors, which are some key indicators of human development.

“The culprit in this case too, is the weak national statistics, data capacity and monitoring and evaluation systems,” she said.

She said among other things the role of the UNDP was to provide management support for the project and ensuring attainment of its financial and technical objectives.

She said the Development Planning Ministry was the implementing partner of the project and was solely responsible for delivering the project activities and ensuring the set objectives were achieved.

“The UNDP is accountable to the EU for delivery of the financial commitment on this project and the UNDP will also support the Ministry in setting up management structures to aid these responsibilities for oversight and management, involving the Ministry, EU and other stakeholders.

“There will be a Project Steering Committee and other technical committees to allow cross accountability on the project outputs. UNDP’s interest is to support the Ministry in ensuring successful national implementation of not only the SDGs, but also the new NSDP, which will be formulated this year. This can only be achieved if the stepping-stones are anchored on robust data collection and strong monitoring and evaluation frameworks,” Ms Khannan said.

For his part, EU Ambassador, Michael Doyle said the LDSP was the product of dialogue between government and development partners to chart the way on how best to support the strengthening of the statistical system to monitor development progress in Lesotho.

Dr Doyle said the discussions started in 2012 under the then Development Partners’ Coordination Forum (DPCF) where all stakeholders were aware of the limitations in national statistics and of challenges that were encountered in reporting for both the MDGs and national programmes.

 “In 2013, the EU supported a gap analysis and needs assessment for the Lesotho Statistical system. In the same period, Irish Aid supported a rapid assessment for capacity to monitor the implementation of development initiatives and evaluate their impact on the government’s Vision 2020,” Dr Doyle said, adding, “Both studies provided a basis for development partners’ joint support to the Statistical and Monitoring and Evaluation processes so as to bridge existing challenges and gaps”.

Dr Doyle said one of the underlining lessons learned from the review of the ongoing NSDP 1 was that the lack of quality data impacted negatively on the design of the strategy and its monitoring.

“A monitoring and evaluation plan needs to be developed and implemented, supported by an information base and tools for continuous data and information accumulation to assess clearly defined outputs, outcomes and their impact on each strategic priority,” Dr Doyle said.

Development Planning Minister, Semano Sekatle said the LDSP came at the right time when the government was in the last stage of the current NSDP and in the process of developing a new one. 

Mr Sekatle said the LDSP would drive the implementation of the National Priorities and Targets outlined in the NSDP by strengthening stakeholder coordination and leadership in the collection, processing and dissemination of development data.

Mr Sekatle said the project will focus on the three areas namely, the development of an ecosystem for statistics and data collection, the promotion of literacy and innovation for data collection, compilation, dissemination and use as well as strengthening the National Leadership, Legal frameworks and Policy.

“The three are interrelated and interdependent and are therefore critical for enhanced sustainable development,” Mr Sekatle said.

 

 

 

 

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