United Nations Development Programme
For The United Nations Global Pulse Lab Kampala Program
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Amount$500,000
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Program
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Date Awarded8/2/2017
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Term24.0 Months
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Type of SupportGeneral Support/Program
Overview
Pulse Lab Kampala uses big data (as collected from cellphones, satellites, and social media) and data analytics to better understand and address development challenges. Pulse Lab partners scholars from African and Western universities, as well as private sector data providers in its work. Pulse Lab’s priority focus is to bring the data innovations that emerge from these technical partnerships into practical use by government officials. To this end, Pulse Lab invests in lasting relationships with African government actors to understand and address their priority policy, program, and capacity questions. Over time, Pulse Lab Kampala aims to help governments move beyond pilot data projects, to more systematic use of big data for decision making. To this end, it works to strengthen the responsible data privacy and protection frameworks in the African region, catalyze the adoption of big data for official statistics, and strengthen an emerging African community of practice around public-good applications of privately held data.
About the Grantee
Grantee Website
www.undp.org
Address
One United Nations Plaza, New York, NY, 10017-3515, United States
Grants to this Grantee
for practical and resilient data systems in Uganda’s new cities
As part of Uganda's Vision 2040 and related National Development Plans, the government of Uganda has focused on urbanization as key to economic growth. This requires regional and strategic cities beyond Kampala, and to that end, since 2020, the government has been reorganizing the administration of several existing major towns into “new cities.” This will create new opportunities, but it will also put a strain on infrastructure and services. As a result, data and evidence use in decision making at this urban level, together with sound governance of that data and evidence, will be critical to these new cities’ success. To prepare for this, three current Hewlett Foundation grantees based in Uganda — Sunbird AI, UN Global Pulse Lab Kampala, and ToroDev — have been working together with the new city authorities in Fort Portal and Jinja to identify these cities’ core data and evidence needs; train city officials on how to use data and evidence to make decisions; support the institutionalization of data use at the city level; and pilot new data and AI technologies to aid in decision making. This supplemental grant is for UN Global Pulse Lab Kampala’s portion of the collaboration, which will include (among other things) ensuring a direct link between the imminent National Data Strategy of Uganda (a process that UN Global Pulse Lab Kampala is leading with the national government), and the work being done at the urban level. (Strategy: Evidence-Informed Policymaking)
for practical and resilient data systems in Uganda’s new cities
The government of Uganda is planning to create 15 new cities from existing towns by the end of 2023. This will create new opportunities, but it will also put a strain on infrastructure and services. As a result, data and evidence use in decision making at this urban level, together with sound governance of that data and evidence, will be critical to these new cities' success. To prepare for this, three current Hewlett Foundation grantees based in Uganda — Sunbird AI, UN Global Pulse Lab Kampala, and ToroDev — will work together with the new city authorities in Fort Portal and Jinja to identify these cities' core data and evidence needs; train city officials on how to use data and evidence to make decisions; support the institutionalization of data use at the city level; and pilot new data and AI technologies to aid in decision making. This grant is for UN Global Pulse Lab Kampala's portion of the collaboration and plays an important role in ensuring a clear through line between the government of Uganda's national data strategy (which Pulse Lab Kampala is coordinating), and this emergent work at the local (urban) level.
