National accounts in Africa

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to make a survey, in "broad outline, of the current country practices in the African region in the compilation of national accounts data (e.g. accounting systems and methods of estimation, frequency of compilation, etc) and to assess the progress made in this particular field of statistics. In order to be able to pinpoint the major gaps in statistical series, basic as well as current, that remain to be filled before the quality and accuracy of the national accounts estimates for the countries of the region can be considerably improved, a brief survey of the major basic and current statistical series, available in each African country to serve as basis for national income estimation, is also included in the paper as Annex I.