African Statistics Day is celebrated every year on November 18. This celebration of African statistics aims to increase public awareness of the important role that statistics plays in all aspects of social and economic life in Africa and in preserving the environment in which people live. The theme for this year’s event is “Better data for better lives: Harnessing modern technology to enhance national statistical systems”. This year’s African Statistics Day focuses on data quality and enhancing the capacity-building of national statistical systems in Africa.

Statistics South Africa’s African Statistics Day celebrations started a week early on 11 November 2015, when the organisation hosted the President of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS) and President of the International Association for Official Statistics (IAOS), Ms Ola Owad, as well as Mr Ola Rosling, CEO and co-founder of the Gapminder Organisation.

These distinguished guests, together with the Statistician-General, Mr Pali Lehohla, presented on the importance of statistics for decision making, and the threat posed by ignorance.

Halving the number of people living in extreme poverty globally was goal one of the Millennium Development Goals, which was succeeded by the Global Goals for Sustainable Development in September 2015. This goal was achieved, yet 71% of the 1 000+ South Africans polled in an online survey believed that poverty had doubled over the last 20 years. It is results of this nature that reinforces the need to ensure that we create a statistically literate society, where decisions are made on the basis of fact rather than supposition.

The celebrations continued this week as the Gauteng Provincial Office hosted the 2^nd ISIbalo Symposium, with the theme “The use of quality data to inform decision-making”, on African Statistics Day. These events, which are hosted in each province, give users of statistics a platform to discuss how they use official statistics and other types of administrative data to inform their work.