A Six Step Recipe for Effective Data Use
At Development Gateway: An IREX Venture (DG), we love food. In fact, many of our conversations—when they’re not about work—are all about which country makes the best Jollof and what new recipes we’re trying.
We know that when you make a great dish, all the right elements must work together at the right time. Finding the perfect balance of ingredients reminds us of how we help government ministries, international organizations, and others find the perfect balance in their work to use data more effectively.
As program managers at DG, we oversee multi-million dollar programs, one related to health and one to agriculture. Through our work, we have developed a six step “recipe” for effective data use. In particular, our approach highlights the importance of partnerships and innovation, which we see as central to ensuring our digital tools and websites respond to users’ needs and that data and statistics are fully inclusive and address issues relevant to all people.
Step #1: Gather the Right Partners
For our Visualizing Insights on Fertilizer for African Agriculture (VIFAA) program, finding reliable fertilizer-related data in sub-Saharan Africa is often a challenge. Data is usually fragmented or closely held in silos within different stakeholder groups.
A critical activity we undertake in VIFAA is mapping out stakeholders in the fertilizer sector based on their interests and influence. These partners are government representatives, customs officers, and private sector actors, among others.
By mapping these partners and identifying data sources, we’ve created country–specific dashboards—that visualize key fertilizer indicators, including product availability, use, price, and policy—as well as a continental dashboard with core data for 14 countries.
Step #2: Conduct Data Validation and Quality Checks
Data needs to be checked for accuracy, clarity, and completeness to reduce risks. If you don’t validate your data, you might make inaccurate decisions based on out-of-date or incorrect information.
At DG, verifying and validating data’s correctness is essential to avoid mistrust in our data management process and to ensure we accurately represent the current circumstance. This inclusive and transparent approach ensures our partners’ willingness to share their data because they see the value and understand how their collaboration contributes to the bigger picture. This also increases partners’ trust since the validation happens in plenary sessions, during which each partner can contest or approve any data set presented.
Each year, the VIFAA program organizes Fertilizer Technical Working Groups (FTWGs), meetings in which actors from private and public sectors come together and validate combined datasets. In 2022, information gathered during FTWGs held in 12 countries led to important insights about Africa’s fertilizer industry, including how geopolitical events have affected the industry and how to protect Africa’s food security.
Step #3: Innovate!
When data needs to be collected on a large scale, in a timely manner, and within a small budget, innovation through technology is a great avenue to accelerate data management efforts.
In 2020, VIFAA needed to quickly collect large amounts of data in order to map croplands in Nigeria and Ghana. Existing map data did not provide enough granularity or detail for stakeholders. To accomplish this challenging task, innovation was imperative! We opted for cutting-edge technology (i.e., satellite imagery) combined with machine learning to provide rapid and scalable access to high-resolution imagery of these croplands.
The data gathered from these cropland maps informs the government and private sector in Nigeria and Ghana on allocating investments to strengthen the agricultural sector. This data helps ensure that the availability and variety of fertilizer products meet market needs.
Step #4: Visualize the Data
In almost all cases, our stakeholders don’t find raw datasets to be helpful. Many of our stakeholders are civil society advocates and, like most people, don’t have a statistics or economic background to parse through highly technical datasets. However, they receive multiple requests to speak to government officials or media representatives with very little advanced notice, so they need the latest research and data in an accessible format.
In DG’s Tobacco Control Data Initiative (TCDI) program, which collects and aggregates data relevant to stakeholders who work in tobacco control in six African countries, we’ve made it a priority to display information in a way that’s easily understandable, using graphs and infographics to express key information. By collecting and displaying data in new formats with clear visuals, we’ve ensured stakeholders can access the key data and takeaways from our latest research quickly.
Step #5: Design with Decision-Making in Mind
Data use for decision-making is critical. When designing a digital tool, we ask ourselves and our partners what decisions need to be made using the latest research and data and how they could best access that data.
In South Africa, for example, stakeholders repeatedly told us that tax and economic information needed to be included in our TCDI websites. They also alerted us to the fact that the tobacco industry often spreads misinformation about the impact of excise taxes on cigarette products. We responded to these needs by adding key insights from economic data as well as a “myths and facts” sections to our TCDI websites.
Step #6: Build Trust in the Data
Our final ingredient is data trust. If our stakeholders don’t trust the data sources we’re using or don’t trust the way in which we’re analyzing data, then our websites aren’t helping anyone.
So, how do we build trust? We’ve found that we need to (1) work closely with key government ministries, civil society representatives, and academics from the beginning of the project; (2) be very clear about the data sources from any information we cite; and (3) invest in relationships with our stakeholders to better understand their needs.
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Episode 2, Season 3 | The Great Green Wall: How Data Can Advance One of Africa’s Most Ambitious Efforts to Combat Climate Change
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Farmer-Centric Data Governance Models: Protecting Farmers and Food Systems Today and Tomorrow
Smallholder farmers are increasingly using digital technologies (i.e., AgTech) to increase their profits and production, improve processes, and reduce risks. In doing so, many farmers have significantly increased the value of their work.
After all, AgTech platforms offer many positive features including: openness, interoperability, network effects, control over market entry and participation, and the ability to reshape economic relationships and rationalities.
However, as farmers become more reliant on AgTech, they may find that the AgTech providers controlling these technologies (i.e., companies, nonprofits, and governments) are more integrated than ever before, resulting in a few organizations having unprecedented access to and control of farmers’ data. This dynamic results in positive and negative outcomes for farmers. For example, some AgTech companies document farmers’ data on agricultural planning software and sell it to fertilizer companies—with or without the farmers’ knowledge or consent. The fertilizer companies can then use the data to price gouge.
Therefore, farmers face the paradox of using AgTech and adding value to their work, communities, and food systems while giving large amounts of data to AgTech companies that have, at best, limited plans for protecting farmers’ data.
AgTech providers must address this unbalanced power dynamic by meaningfully involving farmers in the processes of ownership and governance of their data (i.e., the creation and participation of data governance approaches). AgTech providers must prioritize the implementation of fair and equitable data governance models that emphasize farmer participation while guarding farmers against potential disadvantages and exploitation.
To explore potential data governance solutions, I led the Farmer-Centric Data Governance study, which included an extensive literature review and 45 semi-structured interviews with stakeholders and practitioners. The study was co-funded by USAID and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, with support from DAI, and in collaboration with Athena Infonomics.
This research informed the conception of user-centric approaches to data governance that place farmers and their communities at the center of data gathering initiatives and aim to reduce the negative effects of centralized power. These data governance models are discussed in our report, Farmer-Centric Data Governance: Towards A New Paradigm.
The data governance models we explored were: data collaboratives, data commons, data cooperatives, data fiduciary models and marketplaces, Indigenous data sovereignty, and data trusts. These user-centric models can strengthen the power of farmers as a cohesive group, transition ownership and control over data to individuals and collectives, and build safeguards against privacy invasion, data misuse, opacity, and other harms. These models have the potential to bring about greater societal and economic equity and contribute towards increased confidence by stakeholders in the use of data overall.
Deep Dive on a Two Data Governance Models
Data Collaborative Model: In 2019, Fairfood and Verstegen Spices & Sauces collaborated to improve the nutmeg spice supply chain in North Sulawesi, Indonesia. The initiative took an inclusive, farmer-centric data collaborative approach through digitization and data governance, with the aim to improve the position and livelihoods of smallholders and their communities. The fiduciary data stewardship role played by Fairfood has resulted in increased trust and confidence in data sharing; better communication of data claims and benefits to stakeholders; improved consent and understanding of data ownership; and stronger negotiating position for farmers and ensuring that farmers’ voices are heard. This case study provides insights into developing transparent value chains; incentives for data sharing; a first step to human, digital, and financial inclusion; data ownership; and data monetization.
Data Cooperative Model: Two initiatives, Abalobi and PescaData, support sustainable fishing communities by co-creating a digital ecosystem for smallholder fishers and key stakeholders and achieving marine conservation outcomes in South Africa, Mexico. The unique, innovative approach of a data and platform cooperative for fisheries aims to collect data, establish a knowledge base, digitally support fishing communities, create market opportunities, and better inform public decision-making. The tools are built through participatory, iterative design to create a usable solution and empower fishing communities. This case study provides insights into data stewardship, participation and collaboration, knowledge sharing, and platform and data cooperatives.
Recommendations
From this project overall, we identified recommendations and next steps for AgTech providers on how to ensure that their technology benefits smallholder farmers. Our recommendations are:
- Farmer-centric models should be integrated into digital agriculture programs given their immense potential to shift the current paradigms of information imbalances to benefit farmers, communities, and societies. Farmer-centric models can empower farmers to gain more control and ownership over their data, create individual or collective agency, obtain negotiation power, and protect against data misuse.
- Trust needs to be fostered throughout the data lifecycle. Efforts that integrate data analysis and data collection tools must clearly explain what activities are being undertaken, their benefits, privacy measures, the process for asking questions, and how concerns are addressed and resolved. Data insights must be communicated in a manner that is accessible to farmers.
- Farmer-centric, participatory data governance pursues more consistent, high-quality data sharing, interoperability, and defragmentation. Its impact is dependent on design, deployment, and implementation done collaboratively and built on a foundation of trust.
- Meaningful participation must strongly tie farmers to data governance. Participation in designing farmer-centric models will help ensure their relevance and fit to the particular context.
- The vital role of data stewards as trusted intermediaries within programs requires better understanding between farmers, data collectors, and data subjects.
- The local context, culture, and practices should determine which governance model is used. Communities often know best how to organize and govern; learning and implementation should follow systematic observation of communities, with different vantage points.
- Farmer-centric models should not be seen as a panacea “one-size-fits-all” solution. The practical implementation of data governance or technology is a lot more ambiguous and variable than theory often suggests. A meaningful farmer-centric data ecosystem should be built on a range of approaches.
- More research is needed to identify training and capacity-building needs and sustainability of user-centric data governance initiatives. There is a need to develop data governance skills training aimed at practitioners and farmers to assess, implement, refine, and continue to share best practices of data governance initiatives.
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aLIVE Program Reaches Milestone: Livestock Data Standards Endorsed by Ethiopia’s Ministry of Agriculture
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Climate Action Data for the Sahel Region: Announcing Development Gateway’s Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform
Development Gateway: An IREX Venture (DG)—with funding from the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)—is pleased to announce a new project, the Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform. The project, which provides a new opportunity for the deployment of our Aid Management Platform, is funded by the Austrian Development Agency and implemented by The Great Green Wall Accelerator (GGWA) in collaboration with the Pan African Agency for Great Green Wall (PAGGW) and the 11 Great Green Wall nations within the Sahel region: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Sudan, Chad, Nigeria, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, Senegal, and Mauritania. The project started in March 2023 and will continue through December 2023.
By allowing donors, partner states, and implementing agencies to share data and information on financial commitments, project implementation, and best practices, the Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform will ultimately improve effectiveness and efficiency in the design and implementation of the Great Green Wall initiative.
The Great Green Wall: Restoring Land Together
In 2007, the African Union adopted the idea of building a wall of trees (known as the Great Green Wall) to stretch across the Sahel region of Africa. Since the African Union’s adoption of the initiative, its scope has grown since its conception, and today the Great Green Wall initiative is an ambitious pan-African project aimed at combating desertification, poverty, and climate change across the Sahel region. Overall, the Great Green Wall initiative seeks to restore 100 million hectares of currently degraded land, capture (or sequester) 250 million tons of carbon, and create 10 million green jobs by 2030.
What is the Sahel region?
The Sahel is a region that straddles the Sahara Desert to the north and the Equatorial rainforests to the south. The Sahel region extends across parts of 11 countries; these 11 countries have a total population of approximately 300 million people (as of 2021) and cover approximately 21% of Africa’s population.
As of 2021, millions of trees that were part of the Great Green Wall have died because of rising temperatures caused by climate change. As a result of these losses and the broadening scope of the Great Green Wall initiative, it is increasingly apparent that community-owned efforts are essential in order to obtain the goals of the Great Green Wall initiative. Fortunately, because of the multinational scope of the Great Green Wall initiative, the initiative facilitates an approach that allows each country to address land degradation; climate change adaptation and mitigation; biodiversity; and forestry within the specifics of that country’s local context. However, timely and easy access to reliable and accurate data is necessary in order for this multi-state collective action to be successful overall, while also meeting the needs of specific countries.
Climate Action Data: Connecting Stakeholders, Practitioners, and Communities
Once fully deployed, the Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform will provide reliable and accurate data in a timely manner to Great Green Wall stakeholders. The Platform will allow stakeholders to ensure that pledged funds are put towards replanting hectares of trees and restoring lands, both of which will positively impact the livelihoods of local communities. The Platform will positively impact the livelihoods of host communities by supporting value chains, enhancing sustainable livelihoods, creating jobs, and building human capacity for climate resilience. DG will develop the Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform between April and December 2023. A beta version of the system will be ready for testing in November 2023.
While the Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform will be a new tool in the context of the Great Green Wall initiative, the Platform will be a version of DG’s long-standing Aid Management Platform.
What is DG’s Aid Management Platform?
DG’s Aid Management Platform, which was recently designated as a digital public good, is a digital tool that allows users to gather, access, and monitor information on development activities. The purpose of the tool is to increase aid effectiveness by helping stakeholders track activities through the planning, implementation, and evaluation stages. The Aid Management Platform is a tried and tested tool that DG has tailored to and deployed in more than 30 countries and multilateral agencies.
The Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform project will build on DG’s more than 15 years of experience as the leading global provider of aid information management systems through the Aid Management Platform. Through developing the Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform, DG will scale the use of the Aid Management Platform into climate action programming.
Building the Platform: The Year Ahead
Throughout the year of the Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform project, DG will:
- Develop a data repository for project organizations to conduct: financial reporting; monitoring; data aggregation, analysis, and visualization; and automatic data extraction. This data repository, called the Well of Insights, will be customized to the Harmonized Results Management Framework Indicators, which is a framework used by the Great Green Wall member states. By providing a digital space for stakeholders to coordinate these various activities, the Well of Insights will ensure transparency and foster stakeholder confidence in the outcomes.
- Create a project management and financial tracking module to allow project and funding organizations to plan and monitor activities and track budgets/disbursements from funding partners. This module will allow project stakeholders a method of project management, in which they can build task lists, plan workloads, create budgets, establish timelines and deadlines, etc.
- Finally, to ensure the broad use and sustainability of the Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform, the project will include capacity-building components for frontline stakeholders on data quality and data use.
Additional functionalities for the Platform that may be explored in the future include:
- Development of a community hub to connect climate action stakeholders and facilitate learning and collaboration; and
- Development of advanced geospatial features to enable the automatic detection of changes in the forest coverage in the community by analyzing changes in satellite imagery.
By sharing key data and information on financial commitments, project implementation, and best practices around this work, the Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform will improve effectiveness and efficiency in the design and implementation of the Great Green Wall initiative.
Overall, the Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform will improve effectiveness and efficiency in the design and implementation of the Great Green Wall initiative by allowing donors, partners, and implementers to share data and information more easily and in a timely manner. Stay tuned for more on the Great Green Wall Accelerator Multipurpose Platform project!
BBC News. “Why is Africa building a Great Green Wall? BBC News.” September 26, 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4xls7K_xFBQ&t=29s.
WION. “Millions of trees that were part of the great green wall die.” November 14, 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4PaR6Iu__iQ&t=9s.
United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification. “The Great Green Wall Implementation Status and Way Ahead to 2030: Advanced Version.” April 9, 2020. https://catalogue.unccd.int/1551_GGW_Report_ENG_Final_040920.pdf.
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Advancing Tobacco Control in the Democratic Republic of the Congo: The Tobacco Control Data Initiative (TCDI) Website
In partnership with the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s (DRC’s) Ministry of Health Programme National de Lutte Contre la Toxicomanie et les Substance Toxiques (PNLCT), Development Gateway: An IREX Venture (DG) launched the French version of the Tobacco Control Data Initiative (TCDI) DRC’s dashboard in Kinshasa, DRC on May 29, 2023. The English version of the DRC dashboard is forthcoming.
This “one-stop shop” provides policymakers and other key stakeholders with relevant data to advance tobacco control implementation. The dashboard is one of six country-specific websites that DG developed in collaboration with University of Cape Town’s Research Unit on the Economics of Excisable Products (REEP) and national partners in each focus country as part of the TCDI Program, supported by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Other TCDI country dashboards have already been launched in South Africa, Zambia, Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Kenya. Each country-specific TCDI dashboard addresses barriers to data use in tobacco control by consolidating the available, reliable, and evidence-based tobacco control data identified by national partners as key to the creation and implementation of tobacco control policies.
Why TCDI?
In the DRC, the prevalence of tobacco use varies greatly by geography and socio-demography. The overall prevalence of tobacco use was found to be 27% among men and 4% percent among women in 2014. Smoking among young people is of particular concern. Research on tobacco use among adolescents conducted in 2008 showed that over 33% of 12- to 15-year-old students surveyed in Kinshasa and Lubumbashi reported having used tobacco products, with rates of smoking in girls (29%), nearing that of boys (37%).
For policymakers and practitioners looking to implement tobacco control policies and programs to protect public health, the lack of recent and sufficient data on tobacco control in the DRC poses a real challenge. When data does exist, it is usually only available from scattered sources. By engaging national tobacco control stakeholders in their research, TCDI and PNLCT identified common themes in the data landscape of tobacco control and key priorities for tobacco control in the country.
The TCDI Democratic Republic of Congo Dashboard
TCDI, PNLCT, and other national partners co-designed a publicly available dashboard (drc.tobaccocontroldata.org), a website that aims to address key decision-making needs. The dashboard equips stakeholders in government, civil society, academia, and the general public with reliable and up-to-date evidence to promote tobacco control, public health, and other disciplines. It draws from both primary and secondary data sources and presents tobacco control information in user-friendly formats such as graphs, infographics, myths and facts, and downloadable national legislation.
The website features six themes: Prevalence of Tobacco Use, Tobacco Control Legislation, Tobacco Industry Interference, Tobacco Taxation, Morbidity, and Illicit Trade. The dashboard will be updated with new information as it becomes available over the course of the program.
The Development Process
Before creating the DRC dashboard, the TCDI team first assessed the existing data and stakeholder needs through hour-long interviews with 20 key tobacco control stakeholders in the country. The findings from the assessment were discussed with stakeholders during a workshop on May 24-25, 2022 before beginning technical development of the dashboard. The website was created through an agile co-design process in close consultation with key tobacco control stakeholders in DRC, including PNLCT and other partners. Initial mockups and website designs were shared back with stakeholders for their input and suggestions. As a final step before launching the site, user-feedback sessions were held May 1-5, 2023 and revisions were made to the dashboard based on comments received.
DRC’s Ministry of Health (MOH)
TCDI in the DRC is implemented in collaboration with the Ministry of Health (MOH) through the Programme National de Lutte Contre la Toxicomanie et les Substances Toxiques (PNLCT), a specialized program created in 2003 to lead tobacco control activities in the country. The PNLCT’s mandate is to prevent, treat, and provide medical and psychosocial care for victims of addiction and other problems related to the use of tobacco, alcohol, and drugs as well as toxic substances. Its headquarters are located at the General Reference Hospital of Kintambo in Kinshasa, DRC.
Development Gateway: An IREX Venture (DG)
Development Gateway: An IREX Venture provides data and digital solutions for international development. DG creates tools that help institutions collect and analyze information; strengthen the institutional capacity to use data; and explore what processes are needed to enable evidence-based decisions. A mission-driven nonprofit since 2000 with staff based in five global hubs and around the world, DG supports the use of data, technology, and evidence to create more effective, open, and engaging institutions. More at www.developmentgateway.org.
Other Partners
Other partners who have been involved in the dashboard development are: Alliance Congolaise pour le Control de Tabac (ACCT), Initiative Locale pour le Développement Intégré (ILDI), Université de Lubumbashi, Université de Kinshasa, Programme National de Lutte contre les infections respiratoire aiguë (PNLIRA), Ministère du Commerce Extérieur, Direction Générale de Douanes et Accises (DGDA), and Ligue pour la Santé des Fumeurs et autres Toxicomanies (LSFT).
We welcome you to visit the dashboard for more information and encourage everyone to use the data therein for necessary action for the advancement of tobacco control in the DRC.
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Stakeholder, Where Art Thou?: Three Insights on Using Governance Structures to Foster Stakeholder Engagement
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Raising Awareness on World No Tobacco Day 2024: DaYTA/TCDI’s Work on Tobacco Industry Interference
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DG’s Tobacco Control Data Initiative: Reflecting on the First Four Years (Part 1)
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Faire progresser la lutte antitabac en République Démocratique du Congo : Site web de l’initiative de données sur la lutte antitabac (TCDI)
En partenariat avec le Ministère de la Santé de la République Démocratique du Congo (RDC), le Programme National de Lutte Contre la Toxicomanie et les Substances Toxiques (PNLCT), Development Gateway : An IREX Venture (DG) a lancé le tableau de bord de la Tobacco Control Data Initiative (TCDI) de la République Démocratique du Congo (RDC) à Kinshasa, RDC, le 29 mai 2023.
Ce “guichet unique” fournit aux décideurs politiques et à d’autres acteurs clés des données pertinentes pour faire progresser la lutte antitabac. Le tableau de bord est l’un des six sites web nationaux que DG a développés en collaboration avec l’unité de recherche sur l’économie des produits excisables (REEP) de l’université du Cap et des partenaires nationaux dans chaque pays cible, dans le cadre du programme TCDI soutenu par la Fondation Bill & Melinda Gates. D’autres tableaux de bord nationaux de TCDI ont déjà été lancés en Afrique du Sud, en Zambie, au Nigeria, en Éthiopie, et au Kenya. Chaque tableau de bord TCDI spécifique à un pays s’attaque aux obstacles à l’utilisation des données dans la lutte antitabac en consolidant les données disponibles, fiables et fondées sur des preuves, identifiées par les partenaires nationaux comme étant essentielles au développement, au suivi età la mise en œuvre des politiques de lutte antitabac.
Pourquoi TCDI ?
En RDC, la prévalence du tabagisme varie fortement en fonction de la géographie et de la socio-démographie. En 2014, la prévalence globale du tabagisme était de 27 % chez les hommes et de 4 % chez les femmes. Le tabagisme chez les jeunes est particulièrement préoccupant. Des recherches sur le tabagisme chez les adolescents menés en 2008 ont montré que plus de 33% des élèves de 12 à 15 ans interrogés à Kinshasa et Lubumbashi ont déclaré avoir consommé des produits du tabac, avec des taux de tabagisme chez les filles (29%), proches de ceux des garçons (37%).
Pour les décideurs politiques et les praticiens qui cherchent à mettre en œuvre des politiques et des programmes de lutte antitabac pour protéger la santé publique, le manque de données récentes et suffisantes sur la lutte antitabac en RDC pose un véritable défi. Lorsque des données existent, elles proviennent généralement de sources éparses. En impliquant les acteurs nationaux de la lutte antitabac dans leur recherche, l’équipe TCDI et le PNLCT ont identifié des thèmes communs dans le paysage des données sur la lutte antitabac, et des priorités clés pour la lutte antitabac dans le pays.
Le tableau de bord TCDI de la République démocratique du Congo
L’équipe TCDI, le PNLCT et d’autres partenaires nationaux ont conçu ensemble un tableau de bord accessible au public (drc.tobaccocontroldata.org), un site web qui vise à répondre aux principaux besoins en matière de prise de décision. Le tableau de bord fournit aux parties prenantes du gouvernement, de la société civile, du monde universitaire et du grand public des données fiables et actualisées pour promouvoir la lutte antitabac, la santé publique et d’autres disciplines. Il s’appuie sur des sources de données primaires et secondaires et présente les informations relatives à la lutte antitabac dans des formats conviviaux tels que des graphiques, des infographies, des mythes et des faits, ainsi que des législations nationales téléchargeables.
Le site Web comporte six thèmes : Prévalence du tabagisme, mesures réglementaires antitabac, ingérence de l’industrie du tabac, taxation du tabac, morbidité et commerce illicite. Le tableau de bord sera mis à jour avec de nouvelles informations au fur et à mesure qu’elles seront disponibles au cours du programme.
Le processus de développement
Avant de créer le tableau de bord de la RDC, l’équipe TCDI a d’abord évalué les données existantes et les besoins des parties prenantes par le biais d’entretiens avec 20 acteurs clés de la lutte antitabac dans le pays. Les résultats de l’évaluation ont été discutés avec les parties prenantes lors d’un atelier de co-conception les 24 et 25 mai 2022 avant de commencer le développement technique du tableau de bord. Le site web a été créé par le biais d’un processus agile de co-conception en étroite consultation avec les principales parties prenantes de la lutte antitabac en RDC, y compris le PNLCT et d’autres partenaires. Les maquettes initiales et les conceptions du site web ont été partagées avec les parties prenantes pour obtenir leurs commentaires et suggestions. Comme dernière étape avant le lancement du site, des sessions de feedback des utilisateurs ont été organisées pendant la première semaine de mai 2023 et des révisions ont été apportées au tableau de bord sur la base des commentaires reçus.
Ministère de la Santé de la RDC (MOH)
La TCDI en RDC est mise en œuvre en collaboration avec le Ministère de la Santé (MS) par le biais du Programme National de Lutte Contre la Toxicomanie et les Substances Toxiques, un programme spécialisé créé en 2003 pour diriger les activités de lutte contre le tabagisme dans le pays. Le PNLCT a pour mission de prévenir, de traiter et de fournir des soins médicaux et psychosociaux aux victimes de la dépendance et d’autres problèmes liés à l’usage du tabac, de l’alcool et des drogues ainsi que des substances toxiques. Son siège est situé à l’Hôpital Général de Référence de Kintambo à Kinshasa.
Development Gateway : An IREX Venture
Development Gateway : An IREX Venture fournit des données et des solutions numériques pour le développement international. DG crée des outils qui aident les institutions à collecter et à analyser les informations, à renforcer la capacité institutionnelle à utiliser les données et à explorer les processus nécessaires pour permettre des décisions fondées sur des données probantes. Depuis 2000, DG est une organisation à but non lucratif dont la mission est de soutenir l’utilisation des données, de la technologie et des preuves afin de créer des institutions plus efficaces, plus ouvertes et plus engageantes. Pour en savoir plus, consultez le site www.developmentgateway.org.
Autres partenaires
D’autres partenaires ont participé à l’élaboration du tableau de bord : Alliance Congolaise pour le Contrôle de Tabac (ACCT), Initiative Locale pour le Développement Intégré (ILDI), Université de Lubumbashi, Université de Kinshasa, Programme National de Lutte contre les infections respiratoires aiguë (PNLIRA), Ministère du Commerce Extérieur, Direction Générale de Douanes et Accises (DGDA), et Ligue pour la Santé des Fumeurs et autres Toxicomanies (LSFT).
Nous vous invitons à visiter le tableau de bord pour plus d’informations et nous encourageons tout le monde à utiliser les données qu’il contient pour prendre les mesures nécessaires à l’avancement de la lutte antitabac en RDC.
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Three Lessons on Building Trust in Public Health Data
Accessible and timely public health data has the power to shape policy and significantly improve population health outcomes. Indeed, people often rely on trusted individuals within government, healthcare, and education institutions to provide guidance on health protective behaviors and best practices. The COVID-19 pandemic illustrated how public trust in health institutions and health data can have significant impacts on population health. High levels of government and interpersonal trust were associated with increased COVID-19 vaccination coverage and lower infection rates. Effective public health policy needs to be built on a foundation of trust in order for policies and individual health behaviors to change.
Why Focus on Trust?
Trust is a tricky concept to untangle. Building trust does not just pertain to whether the statistics presented are perceived as factual; it also encompasses the relevance, provenance and accessibility of data as it relates to specific decision-making processes. Issues of trust are further exacerbated by low levels of statistical literacy. The ability to interpret, analyze, and evaluate the quality of data is a specialized skill set. Many professionals who use data to inform their work are not necessarily experts in data collection and analysis. Intermediary institutions as well as data suppliers need to package and communicate data findings with this in mind.
A key part of health communication involves building trust with data users, and tobacco-related data is particularly susceptible to mistrust due to the inherent tension between the interests of the tobacco industry and public health policymakers. Since data can be presented in misleading ways or vary in terms of quality, decision-makers must consider the incentives of data providers to push particular agendas.
What is TCDI?
Development Gateway: An IREX Venture (DG) is leading The Tobacco Control Data Initiative (TCDI) program to address barriers to data use in tobacco control. This program addresses those barriers by consolidating available and trusted tobacco control data, identifying and filling gaps, and creating an online resource for policymakers to access the relevant data needed to pass and monitor tobacco control legislation. Addressing these data gaps requires building trust with key stakeholders. The trust-building process is a crucial part of TCDI’s success at driving policy outcomes that are informed by the tobacco data we supply.
The TCDI team collects primary data and creates websites that hold key insights and visualizations on tobacco-related data from rigorous primary and secondary research in six countries. We use a co-creation process to ensure that the people using a TCDI website play a central role in shaping the website features and content. The first website, built for South Africa, was developed from interviews and co-creation workshops conducted with stakeholders in government, academia, and community service organizations (CSOs) from January to March 2020. During this process, we assessed what sources of data these decision-makers were lacking and what features of the online tool would be important in order for them to confidently cite tobacco statistics in their research, reports, and legislative meetings. These conversations taught us how stakeholders determine if statistics are factual and relevant to their work. And by co-creating with our desired users of the website, we established the credibility of our tool by ensuring it was designed to meet their needs. We repeated this process in Nigeria, Zambia, and Ethiopia, and we will release websites in Kenya and the Democratic Republic of the Congo before the end of 2023.
Lessons Learned in Building Trust
Three themes emerged as important in building trust in health data that are relevant to those who work in public health data generation and data use:
- Fostering strong relationships between data providers and data consumers is key. It’s not only about building trust in data, but building trust in the institution that is supplying the data.
The co-creation process of building the TCDI websites demonstrated that the process of consolidating data into a single source requires building trust with government, academic, and civil society decision-makers. This process involved assessing what gaps already existed within the tobacco data space and continuously engaging with the end users to design the TCDI website. Through the co-creation process, we were able to build trust in the website by responding to stakeholders’ needs and ensuring the data was linked to key policy issues.
The process involved multiple rounds of intentional listening and information gathering. We conducted individual interviews with government actors, academics, and nonprofit members to gain an inside view of what challenges and gaps they experienced in their work pertaining to accessing data.
Next, we initiated the co-design process—bringing the interviewees together for several days to participate in a collaborative process of envisioning key components of the TCDI website. Before even beginning the co-design process, we reiterated the learnings gathered from interviews to ensure participants’ needs and concerns were fully captured and understood by our team. By making participants feel heard and giving them a space to speak about personal experiences in tobacco control, we established a foundation of trust. In the end, participants came together to discuss primary research needs and voted on what topics should be the focus. This process empowered stakeholders to take an active role in shaping the design of the TCDI website.
Overall, the co-design process ensured that stakeholders could trust in the tool holistically, relieving them of the burden of fact-checking statistics from various sources. Public health programs can increase trust in data by meaningfully engaging stakeholders and fostering an ongoing dialogue to ensure the data tools provided are meeting their needs.
- Stakeholders want data that is specific to national contexts and mistrust the relevance of global data to inform in-country policymaking.
During interviews with our partners in South Africa, the topic of illicit tobacco trade and taxation emerged. Several stakeholders acknowledged that the World Health Organization already presents evidence that raising taxes on tobacco does not contribute to illicit trade. Despite this fact, stakeholders reported they could not trust the information to inform their policymaking since evidence was not available at the local level. The TCDI program continues to address this discrepancy by presenting data relevant to the specific country context on this topic. In general, stakeholders expressed the need for data specific to South Africa in order to advocate for changes to tobacco policy. Extrapolating findings and statistics across countries to push policy forward is not as convincing as local, timely data.
- Easily identifiable sources of data promote trust.
Government stakeholders expressed a need for references to be clearly stated within the website in order for them to trust the information. Providing formal citations with a hyperlink to the original source of the data allows viewers to judge the credibility of the information for themselves. One interviewee from the National Department of Health said about the need for an outside system of data, “It has to be accredited. If we are reporting to WHO, we need to [say] this source is reliable.” The TCDI website clearly links the source information to the corresponding statistics, which increases transparency and facilitates trust.
Through this work, we learned that supplying data must occur in tandem with building trust between data providers and data users. By prioritizing an intentional trust-building process and allowing the design of the online tools created in the TCDI program to reflect this process, we ensured that stakeholders are confident in the evidence available to inform policy decisions. During a recent evaluation of the South Africa website, we found multiple examples from government, CSOs, and academics using the data for presentations, advocacy, and research—often on a daily or weekly basis.
When building trust in data is prioritized by those working in public health, policies and behaviors are more likely to align with statistical evidence. The spread of misinformation about health topics means it is more important than ever to engage in these approaches to support the use of data for decision-making. We continue to see the benefits of the trust-building process as TCDI has scaled to six countries in three years. We hope other institutions can use these best practices to ensure public health data does what it’s supposed to—protect populations using policy levers.
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Fertilizer Technical Working Groups Provide Key Insights into Africa’s Fertilizer Sector
Between June 2021 and September 2022, Development Gateway: An IREX Venture’s (DG’s) Visualizing Insights on Fertilizer for African Agriculture (VIFAA) program and Africa Fertilizer (AFO)—an initiative of the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC)—convened 12 Fertilizer Technical Working Groups (FTWGs) in 14 countries which have yielded essential information on Africa’s fertilizer sector, including insights on how geopolitical events have impacted the fertilizer sector and what is needed to mitigate resulting threats to food security throughout Africa.
What is the VIFAA Program?
Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the lowest fertilizer usage in the world. The fertilizer usage is at levels that are insufficient to replace soil nutrients lost every year in crop production. Simultaneously, SSA’s population is growing steadily, with a projected population size of more than 2 billion people by 2050. This demographic shift has resulted in an increased need for policymakers to make decisions that lead to strong agricultural supply chains and increased food security.
Through the VIFAA program, DG, AFO, and Wallace & Associates are working to advance food security throughout Africa by collaborating with industry sector actors at national levels to validate country-specific fertilizer data that acts as a trustworthy source and is aggregated on the AFO website. This country-specific data supports stakeholders in making decisions that help ensure sufficient quantities and appropriate types of fertilizer reach farmers in time for planting—thus, improving food security.
What is a FTWG?
A vital part of the VIFAA program is assembling stakeholders throughout the fertilizer sector in a given country. These gatherings, called FTWGs, provide key fertilizer data across different indicators, validate the data being collected, and provide key information on how to improve the fertilizer data ecosystem. In FTWGs, a variety of actors from the private sector, government, and academia come together to validate fertilizer data. This data includes the types and volumes of fertilizer that is domestically produced, imported, and exported.
Because data is validated collaboratively and unanimously in FTWGs, stakeholders and the public are more likely to trust the data. In turn, this data:
- Indicates the country’s inventory level as well as its ability to and the timeline for sourcing fertilizer from global markets;
- Helps stakeholders identify what key data templates (e.g., cropland mapping, Fertilizer Use By Crop [FUBC] analysis, retail prices, and cost build up) are needed; and
- Supports key actors in identifying steps needed for deeper and targeted user engagement going forward.
Once validated, this data is used to develop country dashboards and added to AFO’s website, which allows for easy access to everyone working in the fertilizer sector.
Insights on the Fertilizer Sector from FTWGs
Throughout the 2021 and 2022 FTWGs, several insights came to light regarding the state of the fertilizer supply chain as well as the fertilizer data ecosystem which are outlined below.
What does the fertilizer supply chain need?
The COVID-19 pandemic, subsequent disruptions to the value/supply chains, and the resulting high input prices on fertilizer put added strain on the fertilizer production ecosystem. In order to protect food security, increased investment in the sector is needed to fortify the system against such disruptions and ensure that appropriate fertilizers are in supply and reach farmers in time for the planting season.
Specifically, it’s already been shown that the price increases in 2021 negatively impacted apparent consumption of fertilizer throughout markets in SSA, meaning that the world’s most industrialized countries continue to grow their market share and control crop output and agricultural fossil fuel consumption. This dynamic leaves little place for farming in SSA, particularly among poorer families, resulting in lengthy and severe food and employment crises, particularly in rural Africa.
Additionally, the increased prices and foreign exchange volatility have affected private sector businesses in some countries, because suppliers are requesting full payment before supplies are made and are still experiencing issues with timely delivery of products.
Dive Deeper: Impact on Private Sector
During the COVID-19 pandemic, most countries suffered because the private sector was accustomed to buying on credit and paying later. Still, during that time, manufacturers were willing to sell to companies with ready cash rather than on credit. Currently, although prices are high, most companies have been buying only a little because they do not want to put themselves at risk for profit loss since farmers are not buying as much fertilizer as in the past (due to high prices).
Some countries like Ghana, Malawi, Zambia, and Rwanda are doing subsidy programs to reduce the price, but it is still high for some farmers since they are not used to these prices.
What does the fertilizer data ecosystem need?
Improved methodology is needed for the collection of country-level retail data across all SSA countries. A more refined methodology could increase stakeholders’ trust in the quality of the data. Trust would be increased even more if this new methodology is made publicly available. Once a new methodology is available, countries throughout SSA could employ it, creating a more robust and more trusted data ecosystem.
Specific recommendations for improving the methodology are:
- Review the sampling methodology. Ensure that its representative of the agriculture dealers in each county;
- Cover the entire national territory, especially the agricultural regions; and
- Engage other local research institutions to validate the research methodology before going back to the field to collect retail data.
Address data gaps in the fertilizer markets, including gathering information on:
- Fertilizer cost build-up (CBU) includes all costs associated with the provision of fertilizers from bagging, freight, insurance to clearing, warehousing, etc. Private stakeholders and governments add up these costs to estimate the cost of fertilizer, and this data informs such things as spending in governmental subsidy programs. This information can be used to optimize fertilizer costs and reduce fertilizer prices at the farm gate through better planning, simplified logistics, negotiation etc.;
- Country-specific information on FUBC through improved arable land under production estimates;
- Disaggregating national-level data;
- Cropland mapping data, in order to ensure there is comprehensive data on SSA’s cropland;
- Seasonal analysis of retail-level data, so that governments know the carryover stocks and leakages. This knowledge helps governments report on more “real” estimates of consumption over the season;
- Analysis on the impact of government policy interventions, including on policies related to subsidies and the blending market; and
- Identifying all the players in local fertilizer markets, what quantities of fertilizer they produce, and how much fertilizer is used locally and how much is exported.
Increase frequency in updating retail prices during this period in which fertilizer prices are increasing on a daily basis. Throughout the FTWGs, stakeholders mentioned that fertilizer invoices are now valid for only one day since the prices increase so frequently. Stakeholders requested that weekly prices be provided on the AFO website, as monthly average prices data come too late to inform decision-making.
Next steps
While new data collection is not a central focus of the VIFFA program, some decision-making processes may require data that currently needs to be created. Therefore, simultaneous to developing dashboards using existing data, the VIFAA program will also work to identify and fill priority data gaps. VIFAA will respond to and learn from new methods to collect or analyze critical data on fertilizer price, use, availability, quality, or policy. For example, data investments may include innovations in calculating FUBC through improved arable land under production estimates and disaggregating national-level data.
VIFAA will also explore different approaches and partnerships for filling these data gaps, including:
- Supporting our partner AFO to collect new data or improve its methods for collecting existing data, for example, through FTWGs; and
- Facilitating data sharing agreements among the government (e.g., Memorandums of Understanding [MOUs] between ministries) and the private sector (e.g., contributing data to the warehouse to be anonymized/aggregated).
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