About Eastern Africa Statistical Training Centre
The Eastern Africa Statistical Training Centre (EASTC) as a professional institution, right from its conceptualization, had its ‘regional roots’ way back in the year 1961. The archive at the Centre reveals that in July 1961 in Tunis (TUNISIA), the Second Conference of African Statisticians noted that it “was necessary to establish a number of training centres to provide theoretical and particular courses” in Africa to respond to the increased demands on statistical services, given the fact that there was an acute shortage of both middle-grade and professional statisticians. The Conference also noted that training professional statisticians is a highly specialized task, which can be undertaken only by well-established colleges.
For that reason, at the third Conference of the African Statisticians in October, 1963, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) agreed to assist in the establishment of a statistical training centre for the East African sub-region i.e. Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Therefore, at a meeting held on 11th February, 1964, at the Headquarters of East African Community (then known as the East Africa Common Services Organization (EACSO), it was agreed that United Nations (UN) would provide, besides a Director for such a Centre, UN Fellowships and equipment for it. It was finally decided to locate the training Centre at Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
The Centre started functioning at Dar es Salaam from 30th of August 1965. To start with, it was handling only Middle Level Training Courses i.e. Certificate, but from July 1966 it was upgraded to impart training at Intermediate Level i.e. Diploma as well. The courses included: Ancillary subjects; Applied Statistical method; Elements of Probability Theory; Numerical Analysis; Official Statistics; and Practical Statistics.
The main objectives of the Centre, at that time, were to organise training of middle level statistical personnel for African countries; and to arrange for the participation of the trainees in the field surveys organised by the East African Community (EAC) and the participating countries.
In 1972, the UNDP ended its support and the East African Community (successor to EACSO) took full control of the Centre until 1977 when the EAC collapsed. The Statistical Training Programme for Africa (STPA) took over from 1979 to 1993.
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For more details, you can visit the Eastern Africa Statistical Training Centre Website Here https://eastc.ac.tz/
