Open Data Series: Kenya Open Data

Open data is the great grandchild of the printing press. Gutenberg and most certainly his mathematically oriented colleagues would have gasped at the amount of information available freely online. This information is stored in repositories managed by private Data officers and governments. These data storage units can be used to understand big picture and micro-imaging of issues in countries and have tangible uses for both growing a business and engaging in work to improve basic quality of life issues.
Open data has endless uses, ranging from tackling pressing issues, addressing health coverage, improving educational performance and giving deep insights into huge swathes of the earth’s population.
At Cion Data, we love data. Not only is so much key data free and openly available but the communities of data enthusiasts, scientists and designers who are willing to study and act on the data is growing year after year. We have created country overviews, so you can get a quick snapshot of some really interesting data portals.
Let’s do a quick overview of the most interesting open data repositories outside the western hemisphere!
Our first country is Kenya, the second African country to launch the open data portal.
Kenya:
Kenya was Africa’s second country to engage in the open data revolution. Open Data in Kenya came early and as a newly emerging force of stability and prosperity in Africa, Kenya has remained a pioneering nation in technology and big data access. Cion data has engaged with numerous data scientists in Kenya and their energy is truly infectious. The capacity for real, productive insights is here.
Here are some datasets Cion has pre-screened for completeness, accuracy and that we feel could be useful!
1. Sources of electricity by household and access type
Identify low access areas for solar or electricity grid deployment based on low rates of access. Cross-analyses with solar irradiation map (available freely online) to find the highest areas of irradiation, near areas of low coverage, to deploy a power generation solution for areas.
Classify counties based on their relative lack of access to regular electricity and calculate household spending on electricity to develop and competitive solution so every county in Kenya is at 100% electrical access.
Use Case:
Data-driven solution to lighting people’s homes and communities affordably. Accurate, county by county profiling of access.
2. Water & Sewage Coverage Percentage
Lack of cleaning drinking water is responsible for the majority of death in children under the age of 5. Lack of proper sanitation in communities can infect water supplies and cause huge outbreaks. A potential use case of this data is to test under-5 mortality against water coverage and sewage coverage.
Another key metric is ‘hours of coverage’ as on average, Kenya has less then 20 hours of water supply as a nation. This shows that the risk of waterborne illness could potentially increase as these supplies dwindle, driving up unit cost, causing people to access less hygienic sources of drinking water. Measure relationship between % access to sewage, % access to drinking water, hours of supply and unit cost with Infant mortality.
Use case:
Deploy a targeted sanitation improvement campaign in regions with highest rates of infant mortality from waterborne illness.
3. Human Trafficking Data
This data contains the reasons for voluntary human trafficking, methods of recruitment and the external destination of Human trafficking victims. These datasets can be merged to give people in Kenya a better understanding of illegal immigration, the risks and reasons behind it. It would be interesting to drill into which counties are producing the most voluntary migrants and why traffickers/migrants choose specific destinations over another.
Immigration and human trafficking are closely linked and by better understanding this data, we can educate Kenyans on the risk and perils of illegal immigration while also working to create legitimate streams for all people to travel and work legally in the countries they are most often trafficked to.
Use case:
Create an educational initiative to drive county education on legal immigration to their preferred destinations and the risk of human trafficking.
Conclusion
I hope this inspires you to take a look and send me an email if you are interested in some EDA’s of any of these datasets.
Email me for more information on how Cion Data can use open data to grow your business and solve problems — daven@ciondata.com
Here are some graphs and charts to get your ideas flowing!
Power Sources nationally:

Water and Sewage Coverage internationally

Destinations of Human Trafficking
