Increasing Data Sharing from
Africa’s Covid-19 Response
Morine Amutorine
Data Science Africa Visiting Fellowship
Introduction
The Covid-19 pandemic has been a catalyst for creative and novel approaches to data access and use, with the aim of supporting decision-makers to act quickly and decisively. Countries across Africa have, and are still developing, innovative uses of data and statistics to enable effective emergency response, improve disease surveillance, aid decision making and more.
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There is an opportunity today to learn from the data access strategies used for Covid-19 response and the kind of collaborations, skills and technical requirements that have been effective in facilitating data sharing for social good.
Background
Data Science Africa, (DSA) has already built a strong foundation of data literacy, and created and nurtured a community of African data scientists. Building on this effort, DSA is providing opportunities for work aimed at strengthening the foundations of the digital economy across Africa, e.g. supporting research into data stewardship and policy. The first of such opportunities is a research fellowship focusing on data policy. The project seeks to discover, study and draw lessons and best practices from the data driven Covid-19 response solutions in Africa, to develop a data sharing framework for social good in the African context.
The objectives of this project include;
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Survey innovations in data access and usage from across Africa in the COVID-19 pandemic response and share these best practices across the African data science community.
Identify lessons from the use of data science in the COVID-19 response for the future development of data policies across Africa.
Develop a blueprint for more effective data sharing collaborations and policy frameworks to support safe and effective data use.
Focus Workshop
To complement this research, we would like to engage with different stakeholders (i.e. enablers, solution providers, data producers and curators, facilitators/coordinators and decision makers) that have participated in a data-driven solution for COVID-19 in Africa.
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To understand the approaches, collaborations, skills and agreements that support successful data sharing.
To understand the barriers to data use in the context of COVID-19 response.
To draw lessons from these experiences, identifying policy interventions that can support safe and effective data use.
To make recommendations to inform the future development of data policies for increased data sharing.
The objectives of the engagement are;
Call to action
We would like for you to join our workshop and/or help connect us to potential collaborators (someone that has been apart of a data driven Covid-19 solution for Africa)
The workshop is scheduled for October 20th (2:30 - 5:00pm EAT)
- Join the workshop / add event date to your calendar
- Tell us about your project
- Connect us to collaborators