Six years ago, in 2016, I led a team of men and women who ventured into the unknown. The birth of that initiative is now marked by its fifth summit in Medellín, Colombia, which concludes this week. I had the privilege of being part of the 25-person team that Ban Ki-moon, then United Nations (UN) Secretary-General, tasked with defining the Data Revolution. This was in 2014.

We delivered the report eight months later under the excellent leadership of Enrico Giovannini, the former Italian Chief Statistician. The report recommended establishing a vehicle to drive the Data Revolution. The World Data Forum was subsequently conceived at the 2015 Statistical Commission.

After submitting our report to the UN Secretary-General, I invited Giovannini and Amina Mohammed, the UN Deputy Secretary-General, to assist in popularising The World That Counts report, which introduced our concept of Big Data. Naturally, South Africa served as the home ground with a clear advantage. Thus, we strategically positioned the country for progress in the Big Data landscape.

When the UN called for bids to host the inaugural World Data Forum, South Africa responded with a robust campaign. Our efforts included school and university visits and a feature on an SABC breakfast show. South Africa’s bid was compelling. At the presentation in Bucharest, Yandiswa Mpetsheni (now Deputy Director General at Statistics South Africa) and I represented the country.

As an institution, StatsSA had significant credibility. We had previously hosted the 57th Session of the International Statistical Institute (ISI), which was a massive success. One of its legacies was the ISIbalo Young African Statisticians (IYAS) Programme, which has cultivated a strong pool of statisticians across Africa.

Wherever I go on the continent, I can find a ‘tree’ to lean on, thanks to this programme. Additionally, we had successfully hosted the Commonwealth Statisticians Conference and the International Association of Official Statistics (IAOS) Conference. The strength of our track record made the bid a walkover and we won.

StatsSA’s reputation is anchored in strong leadership, and at the time, we resisted the fashionable trend of building programmes around media personalities as programme directors or master of ceremony because they are not etched in the subject matter of discussion. I had rejected this during the 57th Session of the ISI in 2009 and was not about to endorse it at the inaugural World Data Forum. So it was marshalled by StatsSA staff.

At the 2009 ISI Session, a South African Reserve Bank participant asked me at dinner, “How do you do it?”

I explained that I had confidence in my team. On matters like these, I did not believe in creating distance. I needed to be in charge, and when my team was in charge, so was I. We left nothing to chance.

The forum culminated in the launch of the Cape Town Global Action Plan (CT-GAP) for Sustainable Development Data. CT-GAP made an urgent call on the need to modernise National Statistics Offices (NSOs) as a cornerstone for achieving the 2030 SDGs.

The Plan outlined a framework for member countries to assess, build, and strengthen NSO capacity. It is divided into six strategic areas: coordination and strategic leadership on data for sustainable development; innovation and modernisation of national statistical systems; strengthening basic statistical activities and programmes, particularly to meet the monitoring needs of the 2030 Agenda; dissemination and use of sustainable development data; multi-stakeholder partnerships for sustainable development data; and mobilisation of resources and coordination of efforts for statistical capacity building.

In my opening remarks at this first World Data Forum, I said that data and statistics are a currency of trust. I also stressed that the custodianship of data—and the prevention of its misinterpretation or misrepresentation—rests on the shoulders of statisticians.

I called on the data community for thought leadership to “fearlessly eradicate” inaccurate or false statistics. I underscored the role of data and statistics in achieving the SDGs by 2030.

However, I have come to the sad realisation that, while you can lead a horse to water, it often does not realise it is thirsty. In the rare moment that it does, it prefers to drink from infested ponds or it will not drink at all. But that is not the full story. Politicians cannot survive on facts alone; sweetened anecdotes tend to attract more attention than hard evidence. The real challenge lies in convincing the horse to drink from clean and healthy wells.

Elections sometimes serve as a catalyst, but the true solution lies not in episodic moments of valour and survival in slight percentage points of just making it into a coalition or Government of National Unity, but in genuine care for society etched in atonement, remedy and intergenerational value. In short, thriving in the life of a nation.

This requires never abandoning the well of thought leadership, which forms the foundation of knowledge and evidence-based sustainable development. The absence of South Africa at initiatives it paid the first deposit into do not shine glory on it, nor dignity of efforts towards sustainability.

Dr Pali Lehohla is a Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, a Research Associate at Oxford University, a board member of Institute for Economic Justice at Wits and a distinguished Alumni of the University of Ghana. He is the former Statistician-General of South Africa.

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