When Joseph Tedou opened a major meeting in Yaoundé, Cameroon last July, he posed a simple but powerful question: who gets counted? Communities left out of official data, he said, often stay invisible when governments decide where to build schools, hospitals, or roads. "Reliable statistics are essential for identifying vulnerable populations and designing effective public policies," Tedou told delegates at the first African Forum on Gender and Child Statistics.
The five-day gathering, which wrapped up on July 10, 2026, brought together government officials, researchers, and development partners from across the continent. Organized jointly by the African Development Bank Group, the African Union Commission, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, UN Women, and UNICEF—alongside Cameroon's National Institute of Statistics—the forum marked a major step forward. For the first time, discussions about gender statistics were fully merged with those about children, creating a broader approach to protecting some of Africa's most vulnerable people.
The theme was "Statistics that matter: rights, justice and opportunities for all." Throughout the week, participants dug into thorny issues: violence against women and children, access to legal identity documents, migration patterns, climate change impacts, and how new tools like artificial intelligence might help modernize how countries collect data.
Léandre Bassolé, who leads the African Development Bank's work in Central Africa, echoed the opening message. He pointed to the bank's African Gender Equality Index as one tool helping countries track progress. "Reliable data provides the foundation for informed development decisions," Bassolé said, reaffirming the bank's commitment to strengthening Africa's statistical muscle.
UNICEF's Ramou Ndure offered a human reminder of why all this matters. "Behind every data point is a person whose needs should be recognised and addressed through concrete public action," she told the forum.
The meeting also moved forward plans for the African Gender Index 2027, a joint project with the UN Economic Commission for Africa. Delegates reviewed the updated method for measuring progress and discussed how better indicators could sharpen efforts to close gaps between men and women across the continent.
Participants left with a clear set of asks: make the forum an annual gathering, push African governments to spend more on national statistics offices, and keep pushing for modern, reliable data systems that can guide real policies protecting women and children.