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Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do About It By Morten Jerven (Cornell University Press, 2013)REVIEWED BY RODRIGO GARCIA-VERDU1Over the past decade, Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has attracted increasing attention from policy makers, academics, international organizations, and the business community. At the same time that the region has come increasingly into focus, the statistical base behind several books and studies2, and ultimately policy making and business decisions, has continued to be very weak. As a result, decisions taken without the benefit of having data, or taken based on incomplete or inaccurate data, may prove to be misguided.This is the main message of Morten Jervens book Poor Numbers: How We Are Misled by African Development Statistics and What to Do About It, which is the first study devoted exclusively to analyzing the state of national accounts statistics in SSA. The book presents a sobering picture of the current state of macroeconomic statistics in the region, as well of the massive amount of work needed in terms of statistical capacity building that lies ahead if one is to address the data gaps.The book is persuasive in arguing that national account statistics in most countries are in serious need of revamping, both in terms of updating their base years and improving their collection, including through expanding their coverage.To make its case, the book relies on a mixture of evidence, ranging from the description of the actual production process of national accounts statistics documented after field visits to some of the national statistical offices, the revision and careful comparison of published data by the national statistics offices (NSOs) and international organizations, and the results of a survey collected by the author. In this sense, the book is remarkable given that it is largely the result of the efforts of a single individual gaining access to NSOs, mainly through conducting interviews with their personnel and through searching often poorly documented methodological documents in their libraries and archives.The book, published in early 2013, has already made an important contribution by bringing attention to an issue that is well known to most people who work in SSA in fields that require using data, but not necessarily to a wider audience who might have recently become interested in the region.3Notwithstanding these very valuable contributions, the book has some weak spots. One of them, recognized at the onset by the author, is that most of the analysis is based on research in Anglophone countries. Another weak spot is that the book does not discuss the significant amount of technical assistance specifically in statistical capacity building provided to the SSA region. This is not to say that technical assistance has necessarily helped improve the situation, but rather that the provision of technical assistance is an important element that needs to be analyzed.The book contains several inaccuracies that sometimes distract the reader from its main message. …
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