Stories, ideas, and updates from DGers around the world

As we look forward to DG’s next decade, which coincides with the end of the 2030 SDG era, the tumult of the present, together with our core identity and skills, point us to several opportunities to contribute to a more hopeful future. We are looking forward to working with our partners in making DG’s 3rd decade our most ambitious and successful one yet.

Over the last twenty years, DG has morphed into a global organization with location-based personnel across the world. Where are we now? Who is Development Gateway and what do we prioritize?

Finding reliable agriculture data in sub-Saharan Africa is often difficult. If available at all, data is usually fragmented and tucked away in silos within government ministries or closely held by private companies. It is also significantly delayed or in a format that makes analysis difficult. For stakeholders who need information for decision making, a lack of reliable data is a significant barrier. The Visualizing Insights on Fertilizer for African Agriculture (VIFAA) program is working towards making fertilizer-related data, a key subset of agriculture data, more accessible to stakeholders for decision making.

DG a été façonné par 20 ans de leçons apprises à travers les évaluations, les mises en œuvre et les mesures d’atténuation pour faire face aux défis. Ces leçons ont contribué à faire évoluer notre approche, à influencer notre perspective stratégique et à soutenir l’innovation continue.

DG has been shaped by 20 years of lessons learned through assessments, implementations, and challenges. These lessons have helped to evolve our approach, influenced our policy perspective, and supported continuous growth & innovation.

Starting in June 2018, DG assessed the extractive industry data landscape in Senegal, Nigeria, and Guinea. The goal was to determine the feasibility of designing and implementing an Extractives Industry Data Portal (EIDP) for each country. A major finding is that extractive industry financial flow data is no longer enough. Stakeholders want information that will help them advocate for protecting the environment, providing youth and educational services, and ensuring access to health facilities in the community.

Ali Diakité is an alum of the first DCDJ Fellowship cohort. After two months of intensive data science training, he was placed with the National AIDS Control Program (PNLS), the government agency that coordinates the national response to the HIV/AIDS crisis in Côte d’Ivoire. During the Fellowship, Ali built a solution that noticeably improved PNLS' efficiency and data quality. As the primary HIV/AIDS control program in Côte d’Ivoire, PNLS uses the tool to make direct improvements to its data quality, timeliness, and epidemic response.

The COVID-19 Africa Fertilizer Watch Dashboard, covering 28 countries across sub-Saharan Africa was launched today. This dashboard uses 11 indicators to track COVID-19 country-specific mitigation measures on the delivery & use of fertilizers to identify impacts on productivity & food security across the continent. The goal of this dashboard is to support efficient and effective responses to the evolving global health emergency, and ensure that sufficient and appropriate fertilizers reach farmers. 

The real work of open data requires digging in when the excitement fades, doing the hard and tedious work maintaining and adapting systems, constantly reflecting upon the underlying assumptions of our theories of change around open data, and testing those assumptions again and again with painstaking, rigorous evaluation. A guest post from Dr. Catherine Weaver explores UT Austin's partnership with DG.

Each day, we work in international development because we hope to make things better. While there are highs and lows in the journey, one of the joys in the work is finding those who share similar values and a relentless pursuit of excellence. A reflection on the partnership between AidData and DG.