The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has supported the country’s first digital comprehensive agriculture census in Liberia.
Quality data in the agricultural sector is vital for informing effective policymaking and accelerating efforts toward sustainable development within the country.
The data collection mission in Liberia, as part of the Liberia 2022/2023 Census of Agriculture, has started on January 18, 2024. This marks the first comprehensive agriculture census in Liberia since the one conducted back in 1970s.
This year’s census uses digital technologies to collect and manage data for the first time, aiming to provide a nation-wide, impartial, up-to-date agriculture data. Working together to fill the missing gap in agriculture, the census activity is implemented by the Liberia Institute of Statistics and Geo-Information Services (LISGIS), in collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA). The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) provides technical assistance to the data collection through the 50×2023 Initiative, which promotes evidence-based public policy through the production and use of agricultural data.
The 50×2023 Initiative is in conduction with and is complementary with the activity under the Harmonizing and Improving Statistics in West Africa (HISWA) project, funded by the World Bank.
The series of survey activities supported by these projects will generate part of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators (i.e., SDG2 and SDG5), Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Program (CAADP) indicators, cost of production indicators, national accounts indicators, among others.
Overall, the census activities contribute to the international, regional, and national development objectives, addressing and filling the critical data gap in the agricultural sector and the related areas.
The preparatory activities for the census have been conducted in the year 2023, which include the training of the census data collection staff conducted in December 2023. The actual data collection has been underway and is planned to be completed in March 2024.
The agricultural sector is the primary livelihood of about 40 percent of the population in Liberia (World Bank, 2021) and accounted for about 36 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (World Bank, 2022).
The sector not only provides income for a large portion of households engaged in rice, cassava, rubber, oil palm, cocoa, sugarcane production, among others, but also is a key to address the pressing food security and nutrition challenge in the country where nearly 40 percent of the population suffers from undernutrition as of 2022 (The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2023).
“Given the critical role the agricultural sector plays in the Liberian economy, it is increasingly important to ensure that high frequency quality data is available to inform policy and accelerate the efforts to reduce poverty,” stressed Yakob Seid, Senior Statistician at the FAO Statistics Division and the coordinator for the data production component of the 50×2030 project in Liberia, supervising the census data collection in the field.
“The emphasis will be given to the quality of census data collection to assure that the census data will be used for evidence-based decision-making in developing the agricultural sector in Liberia,” said Chrislam P. G. Duur, Director and Country Inspector in Margibi County. The Liberia 2022/2023 Census of Agriculture will generate vital data on the country’s agricultural sector that will enable the Liberian Government to accelerate its development agenda in the joint efforts towards achieving a sustainable and food-secure world for all.
About the project, the 50×2030 Initiative to Close the Agricultural Data Gap is a multi-agency partnership (World Bank, FAO and International Fund for Agricultural Development) for data smart agriculture to strengthen national agricultural data systems in 50 countries by year 2030.
The program assists countries to produce agricultural survey data necessary to monitor international, regional (i.e., Agenda 2063; CAADP), and the national development agenda.
In Liberia, the Government of Liberia officially launched the 50×2030 Initiative in May 2023, in partnership with FAO, World Bank, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), among others.
