非洲經濟數據不靠譜 A continent where the numbers game matters

You might think the job of a statistician is one of the dullest in the world, up there with accounting and chicken sexing. But not in Africa. Yemi Kale is statistician general of the National Bureau of Statistics of Nigeria. His task is exhilarating. It is also exhausting.

你或許會認爲統計學家的工作是世界上最沉悶的工作之一，可以與會計師和“小雞性別鑑定師”相提並論。但在非洲，情況並非如此。葉米•卡萊(Yemi Kale)擔任尼日利亞國家統計局(NBS)統計長。他的工作既令人興奮，也讓人疲憊不堪。

Mr Kale is not infrequently subjected to threats, particularly when he finds that poverty levels in a certain state are higher than thought. Once, he says, he sent five of his 3,000 workers to collect data from a remote part of Ekiti, in the west of the country. Villagers surrounded the intruders and marched them to the chief, who threatened to kill them. Only intervention from Mr Kale’s headquarters calmed things down.

卡萊曾不止一次受到威脅，尤其是當他發現某個州的貧困水平超出人們之前意識的時候。他手下有3000名工作人員。他說，有一次，他派了5名統計員到尼日利亞西部的埃基蒂州(Ekiti)一個偏遠地區收集數據。但村民們包圍了這些不速之客，並將他們帶到族長面前，後者威脅要殺死他們。只是在國家統計局總部介入之後，事情才平靜下來。

Mr Kale must be creative. When people are asked how much they earn, suspicion of authority makes them underestimate. Ask them how much they spend, however, and, chest puffed up, they will give a much higher number. In surveys, getting the question right matters.

卡萊不得不發揮創造力。當人們被問及收入時，對當局的疑慮通常促使他們選擇少報。然而，當被問到支出多少時，他們會挺起胸膛，給出一個高得多的數字。在調查中，問對問題很重要。

Mr Kale cannot take much at face value. He even checks his workers’ movements through GPS. Otherwise, staff may be tempted to sit at home and make up the numbers.

卡萊什麼都不能太相信。他甚至通過全球定位系統(GPS)查看手下工作人員的蹤跡。不然的話，他們有可能會坐在家裏編造數據。

It was under Mr Kale that Nigerians woke up one day in 2014 to discover that their economy was 89 per cent bigger than previously imagined, making it Africa’s largest. The overnight “economic miracle” happened after a rebasing of data to better reflect the changing nature of the economy. Booming sectors, such as banking, telecoms and film, which had barely figured in previous calculations, were suddenly revealed to be contributing lavishly to gross domestic product.

在卡萊的努力下，2014年的某一天，尼日利亞人一覺醒來，突然發現本國經濟比此前設想的總量高出了89%，使該國成爲非洲最大經濟體。這一“經濟奇蹟”在一夜間出現，是因爲調整了數據基線，以更好地反映經濟的變化。銀行業、電信業、電影等蓬勃發展的行業在此前的統計中很少被計入，而現在人們突然發現，這些行業對國內生產總值(GDP)貢獻巨大。

Nigeria has one of the most sophisticated statistical operations on the continent. Spare a thought for less fortunate countries where calculating GDP is not much better than guesswork. In his book Poor Numbers, Morten Jerven compares estimates of African GDP for the year 2000 by the World Bank, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Groningen — three important sources of national income data. They are wildly inconsistent; one ranked Liberia as the second-poorest nation in Africa. Another had it 20 places higher.

尼日利亞是非洲擁有最像樣統計運作的國家之一。可憐那些不那麼幸運的國家，它們的GDP統計比猜數遊戲強不了多少。在《可憐的數據》(Poor Numbers)一書中，莫滕•傑爾文(Morten Jerven)比較了世界銀行(World Bank)、美國賓夕法尼亞大學(University of Pennsylvania)以及荷蘭格羅寧根大學(University of Groningen)對2000年非洲GDP的估算。這3家機構都是國民收入數據的重要來源。但它們給出的數據相當不一致：一家將利比里亞列爲非洲第二貧窮的國家，而另一家給出的排名高了20位。

Part of the problem is underfunding. When Mr Kale took up the job, he had a budget of $1m, now increased to $5m. Mr Jerven recalls visiting the Central Statistical Office in Lusaka only to find a crop survey delayed because vehicles were not roadworthy. In 2010, he writes, Zambia’s national accounts were being prepared by a single soul.

部分問題在於資金不足。當卡萊接手這項工作時，他只有100萬美元的預算，現在增加到了500萬美元。傑爾文回憶稱，他曾經走訪贊比亞首都盧薩卡的中央統計辦公室(CSO)，卻發現一項農作物調查因爲車輛無法上路行駛而被延誤。他寫道，2010年，贊比亞的國民經濟覈算是由一個人完成的。

Even if there were sufficient people to measure it, much economic activity is almost invisible. Neither subsistence farmers, hawkers, itinerant labourers, pickpockets nor prostitutes are likely to be taxed. None will appear, in any meaningful way, in national statistics.

即便有足夠的人手進行統計，很多經濟活動也幾乎都是無形的。不論是勉強維持生計的農民、沿街叫賣的小販、流動工人、扒手，還是妓女，都不太可能交稅。他們不會以有意義的方式出現在國家的統計數據中。

In Zimbabwe, only 6 per cent of the working population is employed in the formal sector, according to the national statistics office. “When you try to read the economy from a conventional view, you totally misread it,” says Patrick Zhuwao, a cabinet member. “There’s so much that’s unrecorded. It’s like trying to use a tape measure to figure out how much Coke is in this glass.”

津巴布韋國家統計局的數據顯示，該國只有6%的人口在正式部門就業。“當你嘗試用常規視角解讀經濟時，你根本看不懂，”內閣成員Patrick Zhuwao說，“有如此多的活動未被錄入。這就像試圖用捲尺來測量這個玻璃杯中的可樂一樣。”

In 2001, MTN, a South African telecoms company, bid $285m for a mobile licence in Nigeria, based on its estimate that a maximum of 15m people would ever be able to afford handsets. A decade later, there were 80m Nigerian mobile phone subscribers of which MTN, by then making a stonking profit, had 40m. “Where did Nigerians find all this hidden money to buy phones?” asks Miles Morland, a veteran investor in Africa, who argues that official statistics wildly underestimate the continent’s true wealth.

2001年，南非電信公司MTN出價2.85億美元競購尼日利亞的移動通信牌照，這一報價基於的估計是未來最多有1500萬尼日利亞人能買得起手機。10年後，尼日利亞移動電話用戶達到了8000萬，其中4000萬是MTN的用戶，這讓該公司大賺了一筆。長期活躍於非洲的資深投資人士邁爾斯•莫蘭(Miles Morland)問道：“尼日利亞人從哪裏找出這些私房錢來購買手機呢？”他認爲，官方統計數據嚴重低估了非洲大陸的真實財富。

It can go both ways. Last year, Nestlé cut its Africa workforce by 15 per cent after overestimating the size of the market. In Kenya, for example, the company cited numbers estimating a middle class of only about 800,000 in a population of 44m. Most of the would-be middle class in the cities were too poor to afford its products, it found.

這種誤判可能是雙向的。去年，雀巢(Nestlé)在非洲裁減了15%的工作崗位，原因是此前高估了這一地區的市場規模。例如，雀巢估計，肯尼亞的4400萬人口中，大概只有80萬屬於中產階層。該公司發現，城市中的多數準中產階層太窮了，買不起雀巢產品。

Numbers matter to donors, too. They back countries that are doing well and cajole the laggards, but what happens if they cannot tell the difference?

統計數據對援助機構也很重要。他們支持表現較好的國家，勸導落後的國家，但如果他們無法區分這兩類國家，結果會怎樣呢？

In the 1970s, Derek Blades, an economist with the OECD, found that reported growth rates had margins of error of at least 3 percentage points. In other words, a country reporting a 3 per cent growth rate might actually be growing at 6 per cent — or not growing at all. Four decades later, Mr Jerven considers Mr Blades to have understated the problem. The only thing we know about African economies is that we do not know much at all.

上世紀70年代，經合組織(OECD)經濟學家德里克•布萊茲(Derek Blades)發現，報告的增長率至少有3個百分點的誤差。換句話說，宣稱經濟增速爲3%的國家有可能實際增速爲6%——也可能爲零。40年後的今天，傑爾文認爲布萊茲低估了問題的嚴重性。對於非洲各國經濟，我們唯一知道的就是自己根本不瞭解多少。