The ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Africa’s Agenda 2063 are now well underway. Notably, though, policymakers and other stakeholders often encounter challenges when trying to measure countries’ progress towards these aims—particularly when it comes to data.

The SDGs contain 232 indicators that measure countries’ performance towards the 17 goals, but 62 percent of them are not trackable in Africa due to severe data limitations.

According to the report, only 12 of Africa’s 54 countries have autonomous statistics offices. In addition, Africa’s national statistics offices have often been marred by insufficient funding and a lack of autonomy. Data quality is another challenge, according to the report, due to differences in methodologies and a lack of coordination across national statistics systems.

SDG Goal 3—which is fully aligned with Agenda 2063 targets on child mortality, incidence of TB and HIV, access to maternal health care, among others—has a relatively large share of trackable indicators. Africa has been performing well: For example, over the last 15 years, given that the data is available, we can see that the progress toward reducing child mortality has been faster in Africa than in any other region, as under-five mortality dropped by 46 percent between 2000 and 2015.

Read the full article on tracking Africa's progress by Mariama Sow at Brookings