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. 

20 years is multiple lifetimes in technology. We have seen technologies, companies, and trends come and go – some leaving lasting impact, others unfulfilled promises. Here we reflect on our tech history and our efforts to constantly evolve, to stay ahead of the curve, and to maintain a focus on building tools that our partners can actually use, expand, and sustain.

Since 2018, Development Gateway has led the Des Chiffres et Des Jeunes (DCDJ) project. A mainstay of DCDJ is the Data Fellowship program, which provides data science training to young professionals in Cote d’Ivoire, followed by internships with government ministries, agencies, or NGOs that are part of the fight against HIV/AIDS. The SuperFellows reinforce capacity building and sustainability in the data ecosystem.

Since 2017, DG has been working with the Government of Makueni County in Kenya and Hivos to improve the quality of procurement processes through an online portal that promotes transparency and accountability. The platform is different in that it provides county-level instead of national-level open contracting information. In this post, we highlight the technology behind the portal.

As we've covered before, DG is pleased to be supporting the advancement of Open Contracting (OC) and enhancing data use in Senegal and Uganda. Through the Hewlett Foundation, we'll be completing a series of data use projects over the next two years, collaborating with local actors and developing tools to take existing open contracting efforts to the next level. In Senegal, we're working with the Autorité de Régulation des Marchés Publics (ARMP) and civil society partners to support the Government of Senegal and other key stakeholders in using procurement data to enhance procurement results.

Though many species use primitive “tools” to complete basic tasks, very few creatures aside from humans craft tools with future use in mind. Unlike many software development organizations, DG prioritizes free and open-source software (FOSS). Today, we present an overview of how we built a new FOSS script that has benefited internal IT management behind the new tools.

In addition to supporting timely data collection about water access in Tanzania, the Sensors, Empowerment, and Accountability (SEMA) network provides a public-facing District Water Engineer Dashboard.

“Basically, we used to have two methods of getting information on water infrastructure... The first… [was] the water department at the municipal level would visit the villages once or twice a year during the months of June and December to do stock-taking of all water points and their functionality status.

Access to safe water is essential to our health and wellbeing.

In 2003, an undergraduate student at the College of William and Mary set out to write his honors thesis on the efforts of international development organizations to help communities adapt to and mitigate the effects of global climate change. His research quickly hit a roadblock: existing public data on foreign aid flows was not precise enough to enable his analysis.