Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) Secretariat, working with the African Union (AU) Institute for Statistics (STATAFRIC), has convened a regional workshop aimed at improving how African countries compile and manage national accounts data.<\/p>\n
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Held from April 15 to 17, 2026 in Livingstone in Zambia, the workshop focused on the National Accounts Database System (NADABAS), an Excel-based tool designed to help national statistical offices organise, compile and manage economic data, including Gross Domestic Product estimates.<\/p>\n
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Officials say the system combines the flexibility of spreadsheets with the structure of a database, improving the reliability and consistency of economic statistics across participating countries.<\/p>\n
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The meeting brought together national accounts compilers and Information Technology specialists from nine African countries using the system, with the aim of strengthening technical capacity, improving implementation, and establishing a regional network of experts to support ongoing use of NADABAS.<\/p>\n
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STATAFRIC, which is based in Tunis, provides technical co-ordination for the system and receives support from partners including Statistics Norway, Statistics Sweden, the COMESA Secretariat and the East African Community.<\/p>\n
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Countries currently using NADABAS include eSwatini, Kenya, Malawi, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia and Mozambique.<\/p>\n
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Created in January 2013 by the African Union, STATAFRIC serves as the continent\u2019s central reference body for producing reliable and comparable statistics. Its mandate is to support evidence-based decision-making and regional integration by providing timely and high-quality data aligned with the AU\u2019s development goals.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
–ChannelAfrica\/COMESA–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":20620,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[44],"class_list":["post-32415","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-finance","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"Workshop convened to improve how African countries compile and manage national accounts data","published_date":"2026-04-19 10:57:54","news_description":"Workshop convened to improve how African countries compile and manage national accounts data","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32415\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32416,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/32415\/revisions\/32416"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20620"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=32415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}