Responding to the SDG16 Measurement Challenge: The Governance, Peace and Security Survey Modules in Africa
| Published date | 01 September 2018 |
| Author | François Roubaud,Mireille Razafindrakoto |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1758-5899.12559 |
| Date | 01 September 2018 |
Responding to the SDG16 Measurement
Challenge: The Governance, Peace and
Security Survey Modules in Africa
Mireille Razafindrakoto and Franc
ßois Roubaud
IRD - Institut de Recherche pour le D
eveloppement, UMR DIAL, Paris
Abstract
This paper presents an ongoing initiative, built on a practical approach grounded in fieldwork, to produce harmonised statis-
tics on governance, peace and security (GPS) at continental level in Africa. The methodology consists of adding standardised
GPS modules to official socioeconomic household surveys. In keeping with the widely promoted principles of inclusiveness
and participation, the use of statistical surveys of large, representative samples of the population is a good strategy for voicing
citizens’views and concerns. The adoption of the 2030 agenda, which positions institution-building and governance issues as
a cornerstone of sustainable development, provides a unique opportunity to consolidate this pioneering African experience.
Institutionalisation of the production of GPS statistics by national statistics offices in the official statistics field offers a promis-
ing means to take up the Goal 16 measurement challenge. The paper describes the main methodological options for doing
so and draws lessons and initial evidence from a dozen countries that have piloted the GPS survey module. Selected empirical
results illustrate the analytical potential and policy relevance of this approach.
Policy implications
•Empirical results show the analytical potential and policy relevance of an ongoing initiative by the Strategy for the Har-
monisation of Statistics in Africa (SHaSA) to produce statistics on governance, peace and security (GPS) at continental level.
The adopted methodology of adding standardised GPS modules to socioeconomic household surveys can be economically
and promptly administered.
•Sound statistical surveys of citizens’own experiences and perceptions yield insightful and policy-relevant results to
respond to the SDG 16 measurement challenges. Cross-country comparisons have proved feasible, enlightening and infor-
mative. Yet in addition to the methodological options, the survey implementation process and institutional arrangements
need to be suitable, in particular to avoid donor-driven or top-down processes.
•The responsibility for institutionalising the production of governance data should be conferred on official NSOs. First, these
institutions have the expertise: their proficiency in established statistical standards and procedures stands as a guarantee
of data reliability. Second, governance data should be considered a public good like other economic and social statistics,
and NSOs have the official legitimacy to collect such data.
•NSOs in both transitional and democratic states are interested in and capable of conducting surveys on governance, peace
and security issues.
Building effective, accountable and inclusive institutions has
always been a major challenge for developing countries, but
it is only recently that economists have made it a fully-fledged
strand of their research. As the governance focus took off in
the mid-1990s, a huge need for data appeared and interna-
tional databases mushroomed in the field. This veritable mar-
ket serves a mutually-reinforcing double-edged demand:
demand from researchers who need quantitative data on
which to base their empirical analyses; and demand from
national authorities, the international community, donors pri-
marily, but also a host of other institutions (investors, banks,
NGOs, etc.). Donors use governance data to allocate official
development assistance (ODA) in keeping with what is known
as the principle of selectivity (Burnside and Dollar, 2004). Yet
these large international databases, often based on what the
experts say, have come under severe criticism for lacking in
reliability and transparency (Arndt and Oman, 2006; Langbein
and Knack, 2010; Thomas, 2009). Surveys conducted in eight
African countries have shown, for example, that not only do
the ‘experts’massively overestimate the level of corruption,
but there is no correlation between their perceptions and
reality (Razafindrakoto and Roubaud, 2010).
The 2030 Development Agenda, with its Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) and adoption of Goal 16 on the
quality of institutions, has renewed interest in the issue. This
momentum has brought the long-debated question of gov-
ernance conceptualisation and measurement back to the
fore (Fukuyama, 2013; Hulme et al., 2015). Yet measuring
governance in connection with the SDGs is not purely a
technical or academic exercise. It raises not only questions
©2018 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Global Policy (2018) 9:3 doi: 10.1111/1758-5899.12559
Global Policy Volume 9 . Issue 3 . September 2018
336
Research Article
of indicator reliability and relevance, but also the issue of
willingness and institutional capacity at country level: which
institution, with the necessary human and financial
resources, should be in charge of the measurement process?
Beyond the specific nature of the governance issue, with
its emphasis on participatory and inclusive processes to pre-
vent a top-down approach and factor in national needs,
monitoring the SDG indicators represents a huge challenge.
How can statistics be produced on this ‘monster’when most
of the poor countries were unable to measure the MDGs?
And the SDGs have positively ballooned: from eight goals,
20 targets and 62 indicators for the MDGs to 17 goals, 169
targets and 229 indicators (UN, 2016).
The SDG 16 (see Table 1) sparked fierce debate and deep
hostility from a certain number of countries. It was one of
the hardest goals to achieve along with the health and
reproductive and sexual rights goals. The negotiation pro-
cess to define targets and indicators brought to light differ-
ent stakeholders’difficulties and reluctance to address
governance and its measurement issues. One of the ways of
overcoming the reticence was to consider the goals as glo-
bal, but also ‘aspirational’, that is, each government needs
to set its own national targets in line with the level of global
ambition, but in keeping with national circumstances (Cling
et al., 2016).
This paper presents an ongoing initiative by the Strategy for
the Harmonisation of Statistics in Africa (SHaSA) to produce
statistics on Governance, Peace and Security (GPS) at continen-
tal level in order to reinforce the continent’s‘statistical sover-
eignty’. The GPS-SHaSA initiative works on developing, testing
and institutionalising measurement instruments. It is designed
for use by the continent’s National Statist ics Offices (NSOs) and
is coordinated by the African Union with institutional support
and funding from the UNDP (up to 2015) and scientific assis-
tance from the French Research Institute for Sustainable Devel-
opment (IRD) drawing on the authors’experience. Among the
proposed instruments, we focus here on the GPS modules,
which take up the principle of add-on surveysrolled out on the
ground for two decades now (Herrera et al., 2007; Razafind-
rakoto and Roubaud,1996, 2006).
1
We discuss the implications, methodological options cho-
sen and initial outcomes of this initiative, which is in keep-
ing with the recommendations of the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi
Commission’s work and the OECD’sHow’s Life? Measuring
Well-Being programme (OECD, 2011). Yet it is essentially the
new international environment (Agenda 2030 and its SDGs;
for Africa, Agenda 2063, the strategic framework for the
socio-economic transformation of the continent over the
next 50 years) that has consolidated recognition of the mer-
its of this pioneering approach launched back in the 1990s,
as much in terms of content as approach. For example, as if
in anticipation of the new agenda driven by today’s
demand, the survey modules already meet the new needs
on at least three scores: in terms of content with their
emphasis on governance; in terms of method with the work
put into reliable statistical data to take up the measurement
and monitoring challenge, and in terms of process with the
key need to accommodate national circumstances. On this
last point, the population surveys have the advantage of
taking the international commitment a step further and giv-
ing more weight to the people’s voice in each country to
determine targets and measure progress.
Our objective is not to promote an initiative in which we
have participated but, rather than taking a top-down
approach and prescribing from above any theoretical princi-
ples to take up the SDG 16 measurement challenges, to
consider our fieldwork experience as a starting point. This
initiative appears to respond to a real need for quantified
information on governance in different countries and is
beginning to attract growing interest on the African conti-
nent. We therefore examine in detail the reasons for its suc-
cess, along with its weaknesses to prevent any risk of its
being steered away from its principle and its purpose, and
to draw lessons for other initiatives.
The first section of this article briefly describes the GPS-
SHaSA initiative and presents the methodological choices
made for the statistical surveys. The second section draws a
first methodological assessment from 12 GPS surveys in ten
countries: Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Ivory
Coast, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Uganda and Tunisia; Mali
conducted three rounds of the survey. The last section illus-
trates the advantages of the approach and the challenges
still ahead with duly selected examples of empirical findings
drawn from the surveys. The conclusion presents some les-
sons and prospects.
1. The GPS-SHaSA initiative in Africa
Before presenting the GPS-SHaSA initiative, and in order to
highlight the innovation and its advantages, it is useful to look
over the main challenges involved in the development of
SDG indicators in general, and governance indicators in par-
ticular. Three areas of concern need to be addressed. First,
effective measurement and monitoring instruments call for
particular attention to be paid to the ownership principle to
combat the usual, persistent donor-driven or top-down pro-
cess (Adetula, 2011; Persson et al., 2016). This raises the criti-
cal question of the balance between globally aligned targets
and nationally defined, internalised targets. The second prob-
lem stems from the concept of governance, criticised as both
a catch-all, vaguely defined word (Fukuyama, 2013; Rotberg,
2014) and as a way to implicitly promote the ideology behind
the ‘good governance’notion (Abrahamsen, 2000; Andrews,
2008). Authors such as Andrews et al. (2010) advocate circum-
venting these pitfalls by using contextually controlled sector-
specific indicators with theoretically grounded outcomes. The
third difficulty is the quantification challenge: scepticism pre-
vails over the possibility of quantifying certain qualitative
dimensions of governance (ICSU and ISSC, 2015). All these
remarks point more broadly to the inclusiveness principle and
highlight two crucial concrete questions: who will use the
SDG indicators and how will they improve policy and gover-
nance in each country (Moomaw et al., 2017; S
enit et al.,
2017)? The remainder of this article shows how an innovative
framework can help tackle these challenges, but also high-
lights the problems still to be solved.
Global Policy (2018) 9:3 ©2018 University of Durham and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Measuring Governance, Peace and Security in Africa 337
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