Assembly/AU/Dec.424(XIX) Page 1 DECISION ON THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE AFRICAN CHARTER ON STATISTICS AND THE STRATEGY FOR THE HARMONIZATION OF STATISTICS IN AFRICA (SHASA) The Assembly, 1. COMMENDS countries which have signed and ratified the African Charter on Statistics, and calls on those which have not done so to sign and ratify it as expeditiously as possible; 2. INVITES countries to incorporate the principles of the Charter into statistics law and into national strategies for the development of statistics; 3. CALLS ON countries and regional economic communities to incorporate the Strategy for the Harmonization of Statistics in Africa into national and regional strategies for the development of statistics, and invites all stakeholders to mobilize resources for implementation of the Strategy and its sectoral strategies; 4. ENDORSES the institutionalization of a biennial meeting of African Ministers Responsible for Civil Registration within the framework of a relevant Specialized Technical Committee of the African Union; 5. INVITES the Commission, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the African Development Bank (AfDB) and partners to strengthen the civil registration and vital statistics secretariat to enable it to respond to the ever-growing demand for assistance in improving civil registration and vital statistics systems in Africa; 6. URGES the Commission to coordinate all activities on labour market information systems at the continental level and to reinforce its capacity with suitable staffing and adequate resources, and calls on the Economic and Statistical Observatory for subSaharan Africa, the Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the African Capacity-Building Foundation (ACBF), the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the European Union (EU), the International Labour Organization (ILO), and other partners, to support this effort; 7. REQUESTS the Commission, the ECA, the AfDB and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) to mobilize the required resources for operationalization of the Africa Info database initiative and provide the necessary support to enable countries to develop effective data management and dissemination systems aimed at enabling full public access to official statistics; 8. RECOMMENDS that the Commission in collaboration with ECA, and the AfDB follow up the work of other statistical institutions on strengthening the capacity of national and regional training centres, ENDORSES the creation of an African Statistical Training Centre including adopting the proposed document on the strategy for alignment of training initiatives to SHaSA; and SUPPORTS empowerment of the African Group on Statistical Training and Human Resources and its secretariat, to coordinate statistical training programmes in Africa.