Sierra Leone’s Statistician General of Statistics Sierra Leone, Andrew Bob Johnny, has returned home with renewed impetus to deliver on digitised credible data generation for Sierra Leone, after impressing at the 55th United Nations Statistical commission session in New York.

The 55th Session of the United Nations Statistical Commission which took place in late February to early March 2024, discussed amongst other things the Fundamental Principles of Official Statistics, National Accounts, Demographic and Social Statistics, Population and Housing Censuses, Big Data, Data Science and Data Communication and Dissemination.

In one side event geared towards leveraging on Sierra Leone’s data generation infrastructure, Mr Johnny met with both the US Aid for International Development (USAID), and the US Census Bureau in Washington DC. Both institutions pledged their commitment to strongly support Stats SL during the next decennial census slated for 2025.

Likewise, the Statistician General also met and discussed collaborative endeavours with the leadership team from the Global Partnership For Sustainable Development Data (Data For Now), which aims to increase the use of robust methods and tools that improve the timelines, coverage and quality of SDG data.

In another development, the Statistician General, Andrew  Bob Johnny and the Minister of Planning and Economic Development, Madam Kenyeh Barley, who was also in New York, met with the UNFPA senior leadership team where they discussed UNFPA’s continued partnership and support to Sierra Leone and its institutions, especially its  National Statistics Office (NSO) which is Stats SL.

While at the UNSC, Johnny also held another crucial side meeting with the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), to strengthen the existing partnership which had seen UNECA bring in experts to support previous major data collection activities Stats SL has conducted.