Sunita Kishor, a prominent figure in the field of demographic and health research, brought her experience to the recent Expert Workshop on Improving the Collection and Availability of Multidimensional Poverty and Wellbeing Data as a distinguished discussant. As Director of the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) Project, her expertise is highly regarded in exploring the complexities of poverty and wellbeing measurement. In this interview, Kishor shares her insights on the imperative of balancing feasibility with perfection in data collection and analysis.

The Department of Census and Statistics (DCS) has been measuring poverty using a monetary approach of consumption expenditure based on the Cost of Basic Needs (CBN) since 2002, using the information collected from the Household Income and Expenditure Survey (HIES).

Namibia launched its first national MPI in June 2021following extensive consultations with stakeholders across government, NGOs and academia. In this interview, Fransina Amutenya discusses the construction and implementation of Namibia’s national MPI with Kelly-Ann Fonderson. Fransina Amutenya is a Senior Statistician at the Namibia Statistics Agency (NSA). Her work specialises in poverty, welfare and gender statistics.

Ghana Statistical Service (GSS) launched the first official national Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) of Ghana in 2020 and has since
focused on regular data updates to keep the MPI relevant for informing policymaking. In this interview, Francis Bright Mensah, Head of National Accounts and Economic Indicators at GSS, shares the process of introducing a new poverty measure with Kelly-Ann Fonderson.

Iván Ojeda, a graduate in Administration from the Universidad Nacional de Asunción, and a specialist in Governance, Political Management and Public Sector Management from George Washington University, is the first Director of Paraguay’s newly created National Institute of Statistics (INE).