The past several years have brought forth a series of unprecedented crises from the COVID-19 pandemic to ongoing climate change challenges. These crises have been especially acute across Africa, resulting in the compound impacts of increased floods, droughts, economic slowdowns, and decreasing food security among populations across the continent. As such, fostering greater evidence and data-informed decision-making and citizen awareness to respond to these crises is more critical than ever before.
Against this backdrop, during this year’s ninth session of the Africa Regional Forum on Sustainable Development, the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network’s Thematic Research Network on Data and Statistics (SDSN TReNDS), The Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ), and the UN Development Programme (UNDP) will host a side event that showcases innovative multi-stakeholder data partnerships across countries in Africa, including Niger, Rwanda, and Ghana, that have used new data sources and approaches to advance evidence-informed policymaking for sustainable development within local communities as well as led to more responsive government institutions and citizen awareness. Panelists will discuss their successes and challenges in developing multi-stakeholder data partnerships, as well as best practices and pathways forward for accelerating data-driven decision-making in Africa and ultimately contributing to the achievement of Agendas 2030 and 2063. Insights from the session will also inform a “data for policy playbook” that is being developed by the UNDP and GIZ to highlight use cases and best practices for evidence-informed policymaking worldwide.