The Potential for Data-Driven Policymaking in Africa: Success Stories Across the Continent

By Alyson Marks

Photo by Ninno JackJr on Unsplash

“Policymaking without data is a rudderless ship.” Indeed, data and statistics are fundamental to improving evidence-based decision-making. And while statistical capacity and the use of data for decision-making have improved across the globe, Africa still lags far behind other regions. This is especially true for civil registration and vital statistics (where only eight out of 50 African countries have a system to register deaths), climate data and environmental monitoring, and health data. In addition, even in African countries that have the data available, its use is often hindered by weak data literacy and data-driven policy design cultures. Fortunately, in recent years there have been some bright spots, including the rise of big data innovations and a number of regional and multi-stakeholder partnerships to tackle COVID-19 and other complex challenges. This African Statistics Day, we’ve highlighted a few of the noteworthy cases in which data-driven decision-making is improving development outcomes and decision-making on the continent. 

Data-Driven Decision-Making Across Africa 

• Using Geospatial Data to Advance Urban Planning in Zambia 

Africa has the fastest rate of urbanization in the world, which is why evidence-based policy planning and adaptation are critical to meeting this challenge. To support Zambia’s first National Urbanization Plan, the Ministry of Local Government in collaboration with the Ordnance Survey, the International Growth Center, and the Commonwealth Association of Architects created a base map of the city of Lusaka using geospatial data integrated with census and land administrative data to enable the Ministry of Lands and the Zambian government to identify informal settlements which were previously unidentifiable using traditional data methods. This has enabled the government to better target investments in essential infrastructure and social services for vulnerable populations living in these areas.

• Ensuring Better Access to Healthcare in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) 

The majority of the DRC’s population live far from a healthcare facility, which precludes their access to timely healthcare and has resulted in high child mortality rates. To address this issue, the DRC’s Ministry of Health launched a community health strategy to improve access to quality healthcare in remote areas via community care sites, called SSCs. Unfortunately, the Ministry was using outdated census data from 1984 to inform its strategy on where to establish new SCCs. As such, DRC’s National Program for the Elimination of Cholera and the Control of Other Diarrheal Diseases partnered with GRID3 and the Clinton Health Access Initiative for a pilot initiative that used geospatial data in combination with a site placement optimization algorithm in two of the country’s health zones to establish new SSCs that would reach unserved areas with the highest population density. 

• Combatting Food Insecurity in Niger Using Data-Powered Positive Deviance Methods

In 2021, 1.7 million people were estimated to become food insecure in Niger. Climate change and the reduction of rainfall have compounded this issue, as pearl millet and sorghum, the main food crops in the country, rely on rainfall to grow. With the support of the GIZ Data Lab, the University of Manchester, the UNDP Accelerator Labs, the UNDP Accelerator Lab Niger, and GIZ PromAP Niger are working to determine how Nigerien farmers can improve the production of pearl millet and sorghum by identifying and learning from positive deviants. Using a data-driven positive deviance model, they identified areas in the South of Niger where yields of these crops were significantly higher and then analyzed a combination of remotely sensed, biophysical, and climate data to narrow their focus to eighteen villages and generate insights to inform farmers’ crop production moving forward. 

• Enhancing Kenya’s National Budgeting Through Revenue Forecasting and Expenditure Models

Effective and efficient budgeting depends on accurate revenue forecasts. For instance, if revenues are substantially overestimated, it can result in expected borrowing, high debt-service costs, and cutbacks to essential government services. In Kenya, this is particularly salient, as the government has a decentralized structure in which nearly 50 county governments are each responsible for a broad range of programs and services, and the execution of these programs relies primarily on funds from the national government. Yet, Kenya’s National Treasury has consistently overestimated revenues in the national budget. To address this problem, the Institute for Economic Affairs in Kenya, in partnership with the Urban Institute, is working with the Kenyan Commission on Revenue Allocation to develop new revenue forecasting and expenditure models and data tools to integrate into the budget cycle, with a particular focus on improving how decisions are made on revenue allocation to county governments. 

• Tackling Durban’s Water Crisis With a Municipal Data Exchange

Durban, South Africa loses approximately 50% of its municipal water supply to leaks from its aging pipes, poor meters, and theft. Additionally, many of the municipality’s 500,000 meters are broken or out of calibration, rendering it nearly impossible for government officials to understand how to meet the water demands of the population. Moreover, staff in different jurisdictions have struggled to collaborate and understand the data available. In response to this challenge, the municipality of eThekwini in Durban partnered with Arizona State University’s Smart City Cloud Innovation Center (CIC) to build a municipal data exchange (a cloud-based data lake) to support water services with improved ability to collect, store, standardize, analyze, and access data. The project has significantly helped to centralize the data from the multiple agencies managing water operations and improve data literacy within the municipality, as the staff was previously keeping the data in spreadsheets, which made it difficult for policymakers to understand.  

Looking Ahead

One could argue that Africa holds the greatest potential for data and innovation. And these examples clearly demonstrate the power of data, particularly non-traditional data sources, in improving development outcomes in nearly all facets of life. This African Statistics Day offers an important reminder that there are many instances where new forms of data are being created in Africa with a clear link to decision-making. Yet, this only possible with accessible and affordable technology, capabilities and resources to use these technologies to transform data into usable evidence, and foundational investments in data and statistical systems.