The Council of Ministers of the Federal Government of Somalia has appointed Sharmarke Farah as the Director-General of the National Bureau of Statistics and Abdirahman Omar Dahir as his deputy.
Sharmarke worked with UNICEF for over seven years in various capacities in Somalia, New York HQ, and North Korea.
The amended Statistics Law, which was assent to the law in February 2020, replaces the Directorate of National Statistics (DNS) with the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS).
The new NBS will be governed by a Board of Directors and a Director-General, which will act as the highest policy-making body of the NBS; and will formulate policies and set its internal regulations, priorities, standards, and criteria for all censuses and surveys to be carried out in Somalia.
NBS is mandated to collect, analyze, and disseminate all official economic, social, and demographic statistics.