The African Statistical Journal, Volume 6

Abstract

Since the beginning of the nineties, Burkina Faso has carried out many household surveys. This paper is about the position of household surveys in the monitoring and evaluation system of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper adopted by Burkina Faso in 2000. The first part presents the overriding household surveys available to follow-up development policies. Data reliability is analyzed in the second part of the paper. First, household surveys appear to be under utilized. Second, the multiplicity of surveys, most of the time depending on donor funding and technical approaches, and also their bad planning can lead to an inefficient national information system. Coordination and harmonization of statistical products in compliance with international methodologies are a condition to get a reliable follow up of development policies. The third part is about a key indicator: monetary poverty incidence. Although based on the same surveys, different diagnostics of poverty changes have been proposed in Burkina Faso. The paper explains the main methodological differences between these diagnostics. Finally, the paper concludes with a road map to rationalize the contribution of household surveys in the monitoring and evaluation system of development policies.