C4D2-Training: Working with regional statistics training centers to improve household surveys in Africa

Household surveys are an important source of development data, but in low- and middle-income countries the capacity to conduct and analyze them varies widely. To help address this issue, the World Bank’s Rome-based hub for innovation in household surveys and agricultural statistics—the Center for Development Data (C4D2)—and several Italian partners launched the C4D2 Training Program to increase the capacity of lecturers from statistical training centers in Africa to design and implement sound and modern household surveys.

The Program’s first initiative, a week-long training course on “Designing Household Surveys to Measure Poverty” was held from November 27 to December 1 in Perugia, Italy, at facilities provided by the Bank of Italy. Participants included lecturers from the Eastern African Statistics Training Center, the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Statistique et d'Economie Appliquée, and experts from the African Center for Statistics of the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa. Instructors included staff from the World Bank, the Bank of Italy, the Italian National Institute of Statistics, and the Italian Institute of Health. The Italian Agency for Cooperation and Development is providing funding for this initiative.

The course covered key questions related to the design of household surveys for poverty analysis, focusing on consumption-based measures of poverty. It also discussed the main approaches to poverty measurement, with separate sessions on survey and questionnaire design options for measuring food and non-food components of consumption expenditures, including durables, housing, health, and education expenditures.

The “Designing Household Surveys to Measure Poverty” course is part of the broader C4D2 Training Program, which focuses on the “training of trainers” by targeting instructors from regional statistical training institutions and supporting them as they in turn train national statisticians and other practitioners. This initiative is also aligned to the activities of the African Group on Statistical Training and Human Resources. The aim is to generate substantial improvements in the capacity of these statistical offices and other relevant institutions to conduct, analyze, and disseminate high-quality household surveys.

For more information, please contact c4d2@worldbank.org.