The National Statistical Office (NSO) is the government department involved in the collection, analysis and dissemination of official statistics. As the central point for all official statistics it has been chosen to coordinate the CountrySTAT activities in the country.

The National Statistical Office works in close collaboration with the Ministry of Agriculture and Food Security; Department of Climate Change and Meteorology Services; Forestry Research Institute of Malawi; Tobacco Control Commission and Ministry of Development Planning and Cooperation. Different data sets re aggregated and validated at the Technical Working Group meeting before they are published on the CountrySTAT site.

Composition of the CountrySTAT Secretariat

List of national institutions involved in the implementation of CountrySTAT Malawi

How CountrySTAT Malawi Achieved Its Objectives

1) Technical Working Group Meetings

When the implementation of CountrySTAT Malawi started, meetings were held with the representatives from various institutions in order to form the Technical Working Group (TWG).  These meetings served as a forum to share information about the CountrySTAT framework and promote the collaboration of these institutions in the implementation of the project.  Representatives for the TWG were identified in these meetings.

2) Training workshops, data collection and validation

A number of workshops have been held in order to allow for the collection and validation of data from different institutions.  The data feeds into the CountrySTAT database.  TWG members have been trained in the use of CountrySTAT in training workshops.  During each workshop there is an update of activities and discussions on the next steps and also to strategize on how they will work together to complete the tasks.

3) Communication

Communication is a very important in the implementation of the project, and contributes positively to CountrySTAT Malawi's achievements. The main communications activities are:

•·         The wide distribution of leaflets published by the CountrySTAT team in Rome, and provided to the countries for the Basic Training of Administrators

•·         A Presentation on the objectives, outputs and purpose of the various meetings in relation to the implementation of the CountrySTAT framework

•·         The use of articles to provide visibility and relay the presentations made on CountrySTAT Malawi.

Relation to FAOSTAT

The CountrySTAT Malawi shall serve as a complementary system to FAOSTAT. The CountrySTAT outputs are designed to load easily into FAOSTAT. This process or flow improves FAOSTAT's capacity to provide high quality statistical data at the international level. It also promotes exchanges of data within countries, between countries and between FAO and countries. Following the FAOSTAT framework, the CountrySTAT Malawi shall have statistical data series surrounded by statistical metadata.

As envisioned in the development of this system, data from the CountrySTAT, will be uploaded into FAOSTAT. As such, country contributions to international agriculture and food statistics will arrive from only one source. The CountrySTAT will initiate quality control steps at the country level as part of the FAOSTAT data quality monitoring and evaluation system. The benefits derived from improved national statistical systems will be conveyed to FAOSTAT in the form of high quality data contributions from the countries.

CountrySTAT Malawi Databases

The databases in the CountrySTAT Malawi are organized according to major domains identified by FAO and under two major groups: CountrySTAT Core and CountrySTAT Sub-national. The core data consist of national data shared with FAOSTAT database while the related or subnational data are those with subnational relevance. This arrangement of CountrySTAT Core and Subnational data provide end-users with the possibility of “navigating” through the databases from either geographic or thematic paths.
Metadata for the National Agricultural Statistics in Malawi

The CountrySTAT system requires the preparation and publication of good metadata. All the databases and statistical tables posted in the CountrySTAT are adequately backed up by metadata.