The need to have a strategic approach to the development and improving the National Statistical Systems including building of capacity in Agricultural Statistics was recognized much earlier during the 1980’s. Various discussions have through the times focused on providing information to monitor poverty related development programmes particularly in low income countries that persistently depend on the agricultural sector.

Consensus was built on developing national statistical systems that can meet the monitoring and evaluation requirements of development frameworks such as PRSP’s, MDG’s and other national / regional development plans. PARIS21 attested to this progress by observing the recommendations of mainstreaming strategic planning of statistical systems and preparing “National Strategies for the Development of Statistics (NSDS)” for all low income countries by 2006. Agriculture is a key sector in many economies of the world but its monitoring tools called Agricultural Statistics are in many cases not well developed and in some cases not worthy quoting.

There has been a series of International Conferences on the development of Agricultural Statistics (ICAS) meetings since the first one that was held in Washington DC (1998). ICAS conferences have been held every 3 years to provide sufficient time to address issues and recommendations of Agricultural Statistics (information/data) development.

This website has links to information related to the other ICAS conferences; please browse the menu -Home page (under previous icas conference).

The fourth meeting held in Beijing-China (July 2007) decided to hold the next meeting (ICAS-V) in Kampala-Uganda. This was held in October 2010 at Speke Resort Conference Center in Munyonyo. The theme of the conference was titled “Integrating Agricultural Statistics into National Statistical Systems”. The overall objective of the conference was centered on providing a forum to foster the spirit of cooperation in the sharing of good practices and methodologies of Agricultural Statistics amongst nations of the world.

The conference was open to all producers and users of agricultural statistics such as Statisticians, Researchers, Analysts and decision makers from government agencies, academia, business and the private sector, as well as the partners in development, including international organizations.

ICAS V was spearheaded by a consortium of three core stakeholder institutions (Uganda Bureau of Statistics, Makerere University Institute of Statistics and Applied Economics, and the Ministry of Agriculture Animal Industry and Fisheries) under the umbrella of the National Organising Committee (NOC) that was put together by management of Uganda Bureau of Statistics.

The International Scientific Programme Committee (ISPC) coordinated the conference at the International level by putting together Papers, Session Organizers as well as Financial Assistance. The ISPC also linked with the National Organizing Committee (NOC) on various issues especially on drafting the Conference programme.

The meeting took place 13th – 15th October 2010. It was preceeded by three pre-conference meetings on 12th October 2010. The conference was opened by the Right Honorable Prime Minister of the Republic of Uganda, Prof. Apolo Nsibambi and there were six key note speakers. There were 620 participants from many countries across the globe. There were over seventy professional papers presented at this conference (See menu-conference programme).

The main recommendations centered on three components namely technical assistance, training and governance arrangements. Thus, the conference endorsed the proposals for the implementation plan for Africa of the Global Strategy for Improving Agricultural Statistics. In particular it endorsed the three proposed components of Technical Assistance, Training and Research and Governance mechanism including the need to create a survey framework and build sustainable capacity to produce a core set of comparable statistical indicators.
Further inquiries can also be directed to the management of UBOS on ubos@ubos.org , icasv-secretariat@ubos.org or through the ICASV website under the contacts menu.

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