Government statistician, Professor Samuel Kobina Annim has encouraged all academicians and lecturers to publish their research works despite low recognition and inadequate support from policymakers in the country.
He argued that many academicians have given up on sharing their research work on the nation’s economic data on inflation and some economic research findings.
He expressed that despite this low recognition, academics should not stop doing their work.
To illustrate his point, Prof. Annim shared his experience and said that in 2016 he faced inertia when presenting his research findings to the Ghana Statistical Survey board.
He had completed a research paper highlighting inconsistencies between macroeconomic data and the figures presented by the board; which he struggled to reconcile.
Prof. Annim emphasized he presented two options: engage with the research and improve data use, or treat it as an academic document and publish it.
However, after one and half years of silence, he published his findings, leading to eventual recognition of the issues raised.
“I behaved as an academic and I published. I got back into this state, then I got to realize that we didn’t know how we could defend the issues that we had raised. So, in as much as I was not invited for a conversation, a recognition was made that the way statistics, data, and policies are being presented in the country is problematic,” he continued.
The government statistician was speaking at the maiden deans’ award ceremony of the School of Economics at the University of Cape Coast.
He also encouraged academicians to co-create data and statistics and become stewards of national data, statistics, and policies.
Prof Annim emphasized saying, he looks forward to that engagement as he believes that is the role of academicians.
“We need to start a habit of co-creating data and statistics. As I sat, I reflected on the 2024 population that the UN is looking at today, which is 34.8 million, and the population projection that we published last week, which was 33 million. And I asked myself, how do we reconcile these numbers? We were in this country when Professor Hankey started talking about Ghana’s inflation rate, which was about 1.5 times what the Ghana statistical survey was showing.
This should be the role of academics. We need to co-create statistics. We need to co-create data.” He stressed.
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Source: Angelina Riley Hayford/ATLFMNEWS
