Oliver Chinganya

Oliver Chinganya

Board Member

Oliver Chinganya is Chairperson of the Board of Directors at the Zambia Statistical Agency (ZamStats) and Co-Chair of the Advisory Board for Digital Earth Africa. Until January 2025, he served as Director of the African Centre for Statistics and Chief Statistician at the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). A respected authority in statistical development and economic policy, Oliver is a Fellow, Chartered Statistician, and Chartered Scientist of the Royal Statistical Society (UK), and currently serves as Vice President of the International Statistical Institute (ISI). He is widely recognised for leading transformative initiatives that advance statistical capacity and support sustainable development across Africa. At the African Centre for Statistics, he also oversaw the Geospatial Management Information Systems section, supporting African countries in leveraging geospatial data for evidence-based policymaking. He also founded the Data Science Campus at the African Centre for Statistics to enhance national statistical systems through emerging technologies and co-established the UNECA Digital Centre for Excellence in 2018, which he led until its integration into UNECA’s core work in 2022. From 2018 to 2020, he was also Acting Director of UNECA’s Technology, Climate Change, and Natural Resource Management division. Oliver’s career includes senior roles at the African Development Bank, where he led the Statistical Capacity Building Division, the International Monetary Fund as a Regional Advisor, and the Zambia Statistical Office as Acting Director. He currently chairs the Global Steering Committee for the Global Strategy to Improve Agricultural and Rural Statistics and serves on several influential bodies, including being a member of the Boards of PARIS21 and the Lions Club of Ethiopia, the Expert Panel for the Ibrahim Index of African Governance, and the Statistical Advisory Panel for the Human Development Report.