UN Women advocates for more gender statistics in Cameroon

UN Women and the Sub-Regional Institute of Statistics and Applied Economics (ISSEA) held a training seminar on gender statistics on 16–18 February 2021 in Yaoundé for future officers of the National Statistical System. The training was an initiative under UN Women’s Woman Count Project, implemented since 2019 to encourage a gender perspective in the training of statisticians.

Seventy young statisticians were introduced to the process of incorporating a gender perspective into statistics processes, including collection, analysis, dissemination, and use. They were also taught about the normative and institutional framework on gender statistics in Cameroon, as well as on the role that they are expected to play in the National Statistical System (SSN).

The training benefited from the expertise of representatives from various structures of the SSN, including the Ministry for the Promotion of Women and the Family (MINPROFF), the National Institute of Statistics (INS), the Central Bureau of Censuses and Population Studies (BUCREP), and the General Census of Agriculture and Livestock (RGAE).

Ms. Hind Jalal, UN Women Cameroon Representative ai., advocated with the ISSEA General Director on the need to introduce a course on gender statistics into the training curriculum of the school and strategies to increase the number of women in the school student body. She committed to supporting preparatory courses for women to prepare for the ISSEA entrance exam.

Mr. Francial Giscard Baudin Libengue Dobele-Kpoka,Director of the ISSEA, reassured the UN Women Representative of his commitment to promoting gender equality and parity in the school, and to adding gender statistics to the training curriculum. He also welcomed UN Women’s support in preparing women to pass the entrance exam. He also accepted the invitation to become a HeForShe Ambassador.

ISSEA is a sub-regional school of the Economic and Monetary Community of Central Africa (CEMAC) dedicated to the training of statistics officers of the National Statistics Offices of the six member States: Cameroon, Chad, Congo, Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, and Gabon.