The United Nations Economic Commission for Africa's (ECA) Statistical Commission for Africa (StatCom-Africa) held its seventh session (StatCom7) which underlined the importance of digitising the Africa's statistical systems, use of big data, data and statistics coordination, and political will for effective statistics development in Africa. 'With COVID-19 impact, building back better for resilient and agile national statistical systems requires us to transform by digitalising our statistical systems. We urge partners to support regional efforts in building not only sustainable but also resilient statistical systems on the continent,' noted ECA Director of the Africa Statistics Centre (ACS) Oliver Chinganya. The meeting which was convened virtually tackled the ways to develop innovative statistical solutions to reinforce national statistical systems to keep decision-makers informed of economic, social, and environmental developments in real time. It further accentuated the significance of big data to effectively measure, evaluate, and formulate the right public policies in different sectors including banking, health, military intelligence, aviation, and space science. To this aim, the sessions called upon national statistical offices to collaborate with partners, including academia and the private sector who have the capacity, skills and tools to manage huge data sets gathered from different sources.