Yaoundé 19 March 2020 - Over 40 participants from the national government, municipalities, private sector, civil society and students took part in data collection training workshop held in Yaoundé this week.

This was part of the UN Development Account (UNDA) funded project “Leaving No Place Behind – Strengthening Urban-Rural Linkages in selected countries in Africa.”

Mr. Nukoua John Calvin, Coordinator of the Technical Secretariat of the project in Cameroon opened the session, he gave a brief overview of the project and thanked UN-Habitat and the various stakeholders for their engagement. He highlighted the importance of capacity building in data collection. Ms. Grace Githiri, UN-Habitat, explained the objectives and the expected outcomes of the of the workshop.

The plenary session started with a presentation on the project progress and planned activities by Ms. Ines Ngouanom from UN-Habitat. This was followed by the pre-training evaluation by Ms. Suzanne Koufana, also from UN-Habitat. The results showed that most of the participants were youth and had been previously involved in data collection but only a few had participated on data analysis.

The training was conducted by UN-Habitat with support from the National Institute of Statistics in Cameroon. It entailed plenary sessions, group discussions and presentations from the group rapporteurs. The participants were categorized into six groups representing the priority project sectors which were: Agriculture and Food security, transport infrastructure, telecommunication infrastructure, rural-urban migration and preservation of environment. The group activities were linked to the modules of the training and relevance to the project.

During the second day, the participants were taken through KOBOcollect as a mobile platform for data collection and analysis. At the end of the training the participants understood how to: use KOBOcollect, identify the relevant types of data, apply of the methods of sampling, identify relevant target groups and analyze data relevant for the project.

The end of the training was concluded by post-training evaluation, issue of certificates and closing remarks by Mr Frederic Happi, UN-Habitat and Mrs Leudjou, the Head of the Division of Studies, Planning and Cooperation (DEPC) in Cameroon.