Presenting a total of 110 quality statistics based papers at the 1^st Africa young statisticians conference at Pretoria, South Africa’s capital city in only three days conveyed a million messages in the world of academia. “I am amazed” was the first statement the ISI president, Prof. Denise A. Lievesley said during her opening remarks. The organizing committee of the conference led by Dr. Miranda Mafafo, a Geographer by training who has developed affection for statistics, was equally amazed by the response to the first ever Africa Young statistician’s conference. It was more or less like opening a can worms or a can of statisticians with Ugandans besides the hosts, the South Africans taking a lion’s share!

Personally, I am busy searching for email addresses of the ISI president and Dr. Miranda Mafafo of statistics south Africa just to ask them one question “Now that you have found this untapped wealth of statisticians in Africa, what are you going to do with it?” Ofcourse there are a number of indicators that can describe Africa to a certain acceptable level of confidence: poverty, disease, hunger, ignorance, poor governance, presence of inhuman rights and lots of undemocratic characteristics. Measurement of these and related indicators require valid, sufficient and properly kept quality statistics at all levels especially national and regional levels. Given that we now know there exists a gigantic untapped statistics base of human resources, how do we continue from here?

Below are some of my wild suggestions formulating the famous ten point programme:

1. Support a regular young statistician’s conference to be hosted every year by different African countries
2. Build and strengthen independent National Statistical Organizations in African member states
3. Support statistics students’ exchange within African states and developed countries
4. Develop a statistics human development fund (SHDF) for African statistics scholars
5. At continental level, develop policies that will encourage development of statistics for all member countries
6. Encourage student’s attachments within and across countries
7. Encourage well planned link between statistical methods and usage or application of statistics
8. Promote demand driven short courses for both statisticians and non statisticians
9. Support infrastructural development of statistics training institutions in Africa
10. Promote and support national statistics association across all countries in Africa and their membership

I guess we can really do all this concurrently. Remember, if we can do it, then let’s do it well and since we want to go far, let’s go together as a continent and subsequently as a global village…

Alright, for an explanation and any other accompanying idea, please you are free to contact me…