Oliver Chinganya

Oliver Chinganya is a Zambian chartered statistician (since 1999), chartered Scientist and a fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. He currently serves as the director of African Centre for Statistics at UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). He is also serving as the Vice President of the International Statistical Institute.

Education
He was born in Livingstone, Zambia. After graduating from secondary school, he joined the Zambian Statistics Agency. In 1984, he enrolled in a training program sponsored by the UN Population Fund. He earned the equivalent of a bachelor's degree from the Eastern Africa Statistical Training Centre at the University of Dar es Salaam. He earned an M.Sc in Statistics from Southampton University in 1991, and later an MBA in Strategic Management from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in 2008.

Career
His career involved in the field of statistics and statistical development in Africa. He served as UNECA's Officer in Charge for the Climate Change, Environment and Natural Resources Management Division, and also set up the Digital Centre of Excellence.

Currently, Chinganya serves as the Director of the African Centre for Statistics at the UN Economic Commission for Africa.

Chinganya emphasized the importance of integrated civil registration and ID management and also highlighted the significance of civil registration as the foundation for collecting data from birth to death.

In 2020, he bemoaned the negative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on civil registration and vital statistics systems, particularly in Africa, leading to the absence of vital data.