Making decisions with confidence
A local government leader in rural Tanzania shares his plan to convert his office into a medicine dispensary, after data from community meetups elevated health care to the top of his priorities.
This blog post was published as part of the Data Zetu project. Data Zetu is now an initiative of the Tanzania dLab, a local NGO that promotes innovation and data literacy through a premier center of excellence. For more information about the dLab, visit www.dlab.or.tz. For more information about the Data Zetu project, visit www.irex.org.
Understanding the problems: Local leaders and community members discuss everyday challenges
Meet Gwakisa George, a ward executive officer (WEO) from Kyela ward (one of Data Zetu’s target areas). In late 2017, Gwakisa took part in our Listening Campaign activities, where he had a chance to hear from his community members about some of the everyday challenges they encounter and various ways to solve them.
“Before the Data Zetu intervention I knew less of the challenges faced by the community I lead.”
These meetups took place at an important time. Poor data quality and lack of meaningful use of data have been hurting the decision-making process in most African countries, and Tanzania is no different. To help mitigate this, we created a process that encourages citizens to come together and share their challenges, prioritize them, and sit with their leaders to discuss those challenges together — with an aim of surfacing community-driven data that informs leaders on what needs to be done and what the most pressing pain points are that people face.
(We published this information as open data — view those community-identified needs here)
Turning this information into better services for local communities
This Listening Campaign happened months ago. Now, Gwakisa shares his experience on what has changed since the Listening Campaign activities:
“We have a hospital nearby and I never knew that it wasn’t enough for my people.”
Before the Data Zetu intervention I knew less of the challenges faced by the community I lead, but after the intervention with Data Zetu, I have learned so much of the challenges. Health challenge was one of the issue that stuck in my head, as we have a hospital nearby and I never knew that it wasn’t enough for my people. That was only possible through Data Zetu as I was informed that there is a need to have more dispensaries here in Kyela ward. This really opened up my mind on the importance of working closely and together with my people.
Since then we have had some great collaboration with the community here in Kyela as we have been able to repair some of the roads and the community has been taking part in doing the work.
At the moment the building that is our office is situated, we are planning to turn it into a dispensary as a result of working closely with the community. Planners are looking into the map to see how that will be possible for either we share the building (WEO offices on one side and dispensary on the other) or the office will be moved and this whole building become a dispensary. That’s the benefit of Data Zetu project.
What I have learned so far is as a leader when you don’t use data in making decision the results are temporary and unsure — but when you use data you make decision with confidence and you know what you are doing, it is very beneficial. Through Data Zetu we have been able to start working closely with the community here in Kyela and we hope together we will be able to transform our ward.
When you don’t use data in making decisions, the results are temporary and unsure — but when you use data you make decisions with confidence.
