Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition Initiative

Making agriculture and nutrition data open was recognised by the G20 as an essential element in contributing to Sustainable Development Goal 2: zero hunger.

Aim

Making agriculture and nutrition data open was recognised by the G20 as an essential element in contributing to Sustainable Development Goal 2: zero hunger. The G20 adopted the aim to encourage more agricultural and nutrition data to be made open to make governments more accountable to hunger targets and to drive agriculture through access to a variety of data sets. As a result, the Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) initiative was established in 2014.

Approach

CTA has encouraged the engagement of ACP countries in the GODAN network, particularly through the support of a GODAN presence at the African Open Data summits and sponsored a number of African organisations working with data to be part of the debate. With CTA funding, assistance was provided to the GODAN ministerial meeting in Kenya, in June 2017, which culminated in the formation of an intergovernmental group of African nations committed to open data for agriculture and nutrition. In partnership with the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands and Wageningen University, CTA has also supported events covering weather data services with a specific focus on Africa. In collaboration with GODAN, CTA has also copublished a number of reports and policy briefs explaining how open data issues affect smallholder farmers. 

Activities

The project has three components:

Impacts

The project is increasing access to open data in ACP countries and informing policymakers of the needs and benefits for open data policy in agriculture and nutrition. The initiative is also working to achieve policy changes in a number of ACP countries.