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.