Shimuafeni is new statistician general

NAMIBIAN Broadcasting Corporation chief commercial officer Alex Shimuafeni has been appointed the new statistician general effective 1 April 2016.

This was announced by the Namibia Statistics Agency’s board chairperson Florette Nakusera in Windhoek yesterday. Nakusera said the board has confidence that Shimuafeni will lead the NSA to his best abilities.

“The appointment of the new SG went through a vigorous process,” she said, adding that at least 15 people were interviewed for the position.

Shimuafeni is not new in the statistics world as he was a chief statistician during the early days of his career at the Ministry of Trade and Industry as well as head of price statistics at the then Central Bureau of Statistics.

Shimuafeni, who has been in executive and management positions for 15 years, holds a master of statistics degree from the University of New South Wales in Australia.

He also holds, among other qualifications, a bachelor’s degree from the University of Namibia where he majored in statistics and mathematics.

“He also served as a senior manager for operations and business development at the National Housing Enterprise (NHE) and as group manager for market research and intelligence at Fist National Bank (FNB) where he was a co-founder of the first ever Housing Index within the financial sector of Namibia,” she said.

Shimuafeni was also a market research and promotions manager at Telecom Namibia.

Nakusera and other board members thanked the acting statistician general, Sikongo Haihambo, for steering the agency during the past months. His stint as acting statistician general officially comes to an end on 31 March.

Liina Kafidi and Ndamona Kali have also acted as statisticians general and Nakusera thanked them for their efforts.

The NSA has been without a statistician general for over a year after the former SG John Steytler resigned on 31 January 2015.

“The wait is finally over. The new statistician general has been appointed,” Nakusera said yesterday.