The global Agenda 2030 with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), 160 targets and 230 indicators, the ICPD Agenda and the African Union’s Agenda 2063 development framework place a huge demand for disaggregated data from national statistical systems (NSS) to track progress over time. For many countries in the East and Southern Africa (ESA) region, the increased demand for data and evidence for the planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of sustainable development frameworks at all geographic levels requires extensive strengthening of the capacity of statistics systems to respond effectively, efficiently and timely. The development, implementation and monitoring of these frameworks should emphasize inclusion, participation and leaving no one behind (LNOB) in all spheres of sustainable development.
It is critical to ensure greater availability and use of disaggregated data to guide interventions where the socioeconomic transformation for sustainable development is most needed. This requires that national demographic and socioeconomic data systems reveal iniquities down to the smallest geographical level. For instance, the efforts to advance gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls require the availability of sex-disaggregated data at the local or community level that address the needs of vulnerable groups in accessing sexual and reproductive health and rights (SRHR) services.
Most of the data needed to generate many SRHR indicators are collected via representative household surveys such as the DHS and MICS. However, due to sample size limitations it is not possible to disaggregate results below the level of the region and thereby obtain data on left behind populations. Combining survey and census data using Small Area Estimation (SAE) techniques can, however, allow for the disaggregation of indicators estimated from surveys to much lower geographic levels.