This week in #SDGs counting- June 30th, 2017
Our roundup of what we’ve found and what we’ve been reading this week.
The Data for Development in Africa High Level Meeting from the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data
This week we focus on the recent High Level Meeting from the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data- the Data for Development in Africa event. Here is how we have followed along, and resources to catch up.
Commitments
The event kicked off yesterday, and the Global Partnership posted a blog detailing statements and commitments made. From Intergovernmental Networks to strengthened National ID plans to the growth and use of African Data Science Hubs, the data revolution in African nations is moving forward, and quickly. The blog details individual country-level commitments, and how UN agencies will partner regionally to increase data for the SDGs.
Social Media
The event was popular on Twitter, and although the time difference made it hard to catch Tweets in real time for those in the US, the consistent use of the #AfData17 hashtag made it easy to catch up on what was being said.
Livestream
The UN Foundation and the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data partnered to live stream sessions at the event. While the stream is now ended, we hope maybe to see a recording available in the coming days!
Next Steps
Mahamudu Bawumia, the Vice President of Ghana, wrote an op-ed that appeared today in the Kenyan newspaper, the Star. The article outlines the background and reasons for hosting such an event in Africa, and calls for governments to embrace the data revolution moving forward. It contains the recent announcement of new international board members joining the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data.
Making the big changes that this requires will take ongoing leadership from ministers, from heads of agencies and from CEO’s. This isn’t a one day event where we hand back responsibility to the data wranglers after our speeches; I, along with Safaricom CEO Bob Collymore, United Nations Deputy Secretary General Amina Mohammed, Kenyan Ambassador Ken Osinde and others have joined the board of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data to maintain international pressure to invest in data as a driver of global progress. We will do our part, and we need the rest of the world to do theirs.
If the data is poor, you are going to make poor decisions. If the data cannot be broken down into even simple categories like men and women, old and young, racial groups, then people get overlooked or ‘left behind’ in development parlance.
