Global Goals for Local Impact

Al is the founder of the Open Institute, an African organisation that works with governments and civil society organisations to promote open government and citizen engagement.

Primarily, Al works across sub-Saharan Africa but contributes to global open government movements. He sits on the Technical Advisory Committee of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD).

He has served as a member of the Global Open Data Working Group and the Global Open Data Initiative and was the co-chair of the Kenya OGP Working Group, chair of the Kenya Open Data Taskforce and the Kenya Open Government Initiative.

Al is a Mandela Washington Fellow (2014) and was recognised as a New Generation African Leader (2013) – African Leadership Network among other recognitions. He was last year named in ‘Top 40 under 40 Kenyan Men’ by leading publication ‘Business Daily.’

I believe that citizens should have the power to control how development is done in their communities and that the government should implement projects according to citizen's expressed needs. The impediments to active citizenship is that often citizens lack data about their situations and therefore they do not have the ability to negotiate what they want to do. 

Through the GGLI programme, we have been able to demonstrate that citizens who collect their own data can have the power to make specific asks from the government that would align with the communities highest priorities and needs. 

We started this project in a location (the smallest administrative area unit) in Lanet Umoja, Nakuru county, where citizens used their data to establish a dispensary in their community and to get clean drinking water (through water filters to each of their 12500 households.

Lanet Umoja Residents collecting water filters for each home.  

Imagine that members of your community had the kind of data that allowed them to strategically plan for the government projects directly? Imagine that the government had a strategic plan for every village because the citizens of those villages are actively engaging them on what their priorities are? 

The challenge today is that governments all over the world solve problems at macro-level and in many cases citizens are left behind because they were counted in the aggregate rather than specifically. Government solutions such as the distribution of fertilizer or cow feed to farmers are porous because brokers in the know collect the free fertilizer, hoard it and then sell it to farmers for a profit. Governments need to know each farmer and what they are growing on regular basis so that they can tailor-make solutions for each farmer. If the government knew 835 farmers in village X have dairy cows but are too poor to afford feed, then they can specifically budget to support those farmers. 

The opportunity is to have government have data like "3045 single women have 9875 children under the age of ten, 4781 of whom do not have school fees."

The Global Goals for Local Impact project works with citizens at village level and the hyper-local government to collect citizen generated data from every household and then use that data to identify the highest priorities and greatest needs of the most households and seek engage government and other stakeholders on specific measures to meet their needs. 

Working with community leaders, we: 

• train them on the value of data in development and data collection
• structure a comprehensive data collection tool that suits the community
• collect data from every household on a wide array of issues (education, housing, water, food, work, health etc)
• analyse and visualise the data for easy consumption by all citizens
• identify community needs and priorities
• engage with government and other stakeholders on the specific priorities of the community

We started out in a small location but we are now working with counties (similar to US States) to collect data and plan for every single household.

Example of Posters presented to community from citizen data

First, our our project serves citizens in villages and hyperlocal environments because it helps them take charge of their development activities and makes them active partners of the government. It shifts the paradigm from "doing things for the community to doing things with the community. 

Secondly, it helps public officers improve their relationship with citizens and strengthens the government's ability to plan more equitably for the development of every village as opposed to the more common equal distribution of resources that leaves many communities having too much of what they do not need and too little of what they do need. 

It also helps non-profits and investors better engage with communities who are able to provide specific data that enables better partnerships, e.g. "in our village we grow 1598 avocado trees that have an average yield of 120 kilos - Mary's house provided 124kg last year and Josiah's 113kg" or "We have 834 young people who have college level electrical skills but do not have jobs."

Our project is aligned to at least two of the Elevate Prize dimensions: "Elevating opportunities for all people, especially those who are traditionally left behind" and "Elevating issues and their projects by building awareness and driving action to solve the most difficult problems of our world."

Data is the one valuable commodity that is commonly used by businesses and governments to grow their value chains, but that is most inaccessible to citizens who need it for their own development. We think we can change that.

We came up with this project as the Sustainable Development Goals were being promulgated. Speaking with Chief Francis Kariuki, famously known as the tweeting chief, we pondered on whether it is not more plausible for the SDGs to be achieved at the hyperlocal level - and cumulatively nationally and globally - to wit that if everyone in every village has clean drinking water, the SDG 6 has a ticked check box globally. 

Facing skepticism from statisticians, we sought to demonstrate that useful administrative data could be collected by citizens from every household more regularly than the ten-year census. 

We have continued to experiment on how it could work at progressively larger scale over time - starting from location (a collection of villages) to sub-county (a collection of locations)  and now to county level (a collection of sub-counties, equivalent of US states)

I am passionate about this project because of its sheer capacity to change even the most illiterate citizen to an active informed policy maker. I am passionate because I have seen directly the impact that having data has had on farmers who used their citizen generated data to start small cooperatives to increase their competitiveness and I have seen non-profits save money and deliver impact by providing citizens with exactly what they need.

• Skill: My team has the data curation skills and technical skills to work with citizens to collect, analyse and visualise data that helps them strengthen their communities' development
• Learning: We have developed a mechanism not only to learn consistently about what we are doing but to regularly share what we have learnt. So far we have built datalocal.info as a tool to share our experiences, but we are now also building a MOOC to make our knowledge uniquitous. We are also working with a community in Ghana to deliver the same project there.
• Experience: We have been growing this project from scale to scale over time 
• Great government relations: We have a great relationship with government at all levels, which we leverage for the benefit of the citizens we work with. 

As we started working to scale up the project from Chief Francis Kariuki, we encountered challenges working with a citizens in some of the locations we were scaling up to because they did not like or trust their chiefs. In one of the locations for example, the chief was dishonest and therefore had a very bad relationship with the citizens. We were able to leverage the good standing that the chief's superiors had with the community and work directly with the community leaders all the while engaging with the chief separately in a way that enabled the community to collect the data, analyse it and establish farmers cooperatives.

In 2011, I approached the government of Kenya and proposed that Kenya implements open data as a means to strengthen transparency and increase citizen engagement. The president agreed with me and directed that the country launch a new open data initiative within 8 weeks. I established the Kenya Open Data taskforce that included a diverse set of organisations and we were able to collect data from government departments, digitize the data, visualise it in an open data platform. 

Kenya became the fist countrt in Africa and one of the first in the world to open up its data.

• Currently 110,000 households (assume a household of 6)
• In one year 300,000 households
• in 5 years, 2-3 million households

1. develop a MOOC (online learning) to make our lessons learnt readilly available for many communities to replicate our project
2. Scale our work to ensure there is citizen generated data in at least 3 counties in 1 year and all 47 counties (national) in 5 years
3. Start work with a community in Ghana to demonstrate that citizen generated data can change lives everywhere

1. COVID-19 is an emerging barrier that we are yet to fully understand
2. Funding for developing the MOOC in the scale that we want - well recorded lectures and papers, translated to at least 5 languages
3. Developing the legal frameworks that enable sustainability of the project

• COVID-19 - we don't know yet
• We are fundraising for the MOOC as we are doing whatever we can to start developing it, albeit slower.
• We are working to support at least 1 county government to develop legislation that enables data management as part of county processes.

• Hewlett Foundation (funder)
• Development Initiatives
• SDG Kenya Forum
• Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data

• Funded by Hewlett Foundation
• Start up funds by Development Initiatives
• One county Citizen Data collection supported by GIZ 

We are currently hoping for:

• $300,000 for developing a globally accessible MOOC that showcases all the learning from all aspects of the GGLI programme
• 250,000 over 2 years to conduct citizen generated data in at least 2 other counties