Capturing local household data for impactful SDG implementation
The changemakers behind this project took the position that the sustainable development goals are best achieved by citizens at subnational level, based on their experience. They therefore set out to demonstrate that this is actually possible and that citizens, when properly organized, can achieve these goals using every household’s data.
They worked with the community leaders to understand the value of data in identifying the
development gaps and the needs that they must address in order to achieve the goals in
their area. Thanks to the support of the community they were able to collect Citizen Generated Data from every household in Lanet Umoja (12,500) on all aspects relating to the SDGs, including security, food, agriculture, livelihoods, education, health, energy, water and sanitation.
This is a fairly new concept globally and certainly in Africa. They are now moving their initiative to work with 12 locations (approx, 200,000 households) to replicate the work they are doing there. But they are also working with the government to mainstream our model nationally. The Open Institute works with governments, civil society, private sector companies, media organisations and others to realize citizen-driven open societies in Africa, managed by informed, fact-driven citizens.
The collected data was visualized on a portal which can be viewed at
http://datalocal.info/lanet to enable the entire community to access it and analyze what it
meant to them. The community was able to identify a number of key needs in the location –
there was no health centre in the whole location, households that were led by women were
affected by insecurity and that while there was water in the location and there was a high
prevalence of waterborne diseases.
Their aim is to do this through various community-level initiatives and forging partnerships with other organizations in this space. Through their work, the people behind this initiative aim to achieve two main changes in our societies: they want to see governments that proactively open everything that is relevant to development into the public light and to give value to citizen voices.