AfDB Ready to Support Ethiopia’s Model Economic Reforms: Bank’s Chief Statistician

Addis Ababa, August 12, 2025 (ENA) -- The African Development Bank (AfDB) has expressed its readiness to support Ethiopia in implementing the ongoing model economic reforms, commending the country for using the required statistical systems to implement reform policies.

In an exclusive interview with ENA, AfDB Chief Statistician Vincent Negendakumana said the reforms by the government are very important and the policies are aligned with those new challenges and the latest development.

According to him, “Ethiopia, compared to other African countries, is leading in terms of development.”

For sure, those reforms will be emulated by African countries. “So the African Development Bank stands ready to support Ethiopia in implementing those reforms.”

For the chief statistician, good policies are required to guide the development of a country; and only statistics can help those policies to ensure that the intended objectives are achieved.

In this respect, the African Development Bank has been providing capacity to member states in the field of statistics through capacity building programs, he added.

Highlighting that agriculture statistics is one of the key sectors to develop African countries, Negendakumana stated that the Bank is happy to assist Ethiopia to develop its administrative data system that can generate good information using the latest technology.

Overall, Ethiopia has achieved a lot in comparison to other countries that have one of the strongest agriculture systems, the Chief Statistician noted, adding that this is mainly explained by the strong commitment of the government.

He pointed out that the government has been supporting the sector using its own resources regularly to run all these statistical operations, and this explains why Ethiopia has a strong capacity.

Negendakumana commended the nation’s strong institutional framework, including working together with other line ministries and having strategic ways to organize how the work is done, and also to mobilize resources.

The country is also using the required international standards and methods to produce statistics as the produced data is accessible to all users, not only nationally, but regionally and globally as well.

The African Development Bank is committed to providing statistical capacity building to member states so that they have strong, robust statistical systems that produce quality data to inform those development policies, the Chief Statistician reaffirmed.

Stressing the need to having quality statistical systems to achieve African Union and also global agendas like sustainable development goals, he further said producing quality data helps to measure the progress being made in implementing those development policies.