Data collaborative on WASH in DRC

Following the success of the data collaborative project in the Democratic Republic of Congo organized in 2017-18 by CartONG and OpenStreetMap-DRC on health-related data, a similar initiative is being launched in 2019 on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) data.

This project is being launched with the support of the Agence Française de Développement (AFD), following the PILAEP 2 project (Promotion of Innovative Modalities for Access to Drinking Water), which aims to set up sustainable drinking water supply systems for populations in the suburban districts of Kinshasa and Bas Congo not served by the national water supply authority.

The PILAEP 2 project, in collaboration with several partners including the DIAL laboratory and the INS-RDC, has enabled significant data collection and analysis work (particularly for evaluation purposes in a results-based management approach). In order to ensure that access and updating of this data is sustainable, particularly for local actors, AFD wanted to support a sustainable collaboration approach in the DRC and Kinshasa in particular.

The objective of this approach will be to establish an inventory of actors, data and barriers in order to encourage sharing, and to work together to analyse these data. To this end, stakeholders will be encouraged to rely on existing resources within their various organizations, public authorities, but also open data platforms and in particular OpenStreetMap. A pilot field mission will also be organised to test, with interested partners, the methodologies developed together. The provisional timeframe:

In 2019:

The data collaborative initiative on WASH data started in November 2019 with a kick-off workshop that gathered 28 participants from 14 organizations (international & local NGOs, UN representatives, donors and government agencies) in Kinshasa. This workshop allowed us to define the plan of action and objectives for 2020 with the organizations interested by this new project.

In 2020:

We had planned follow-up activities including a field pilot and a second workshop in 2020. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has not allowed us to continue the activities as planned, blocking the possibilities to organize events as well as to deploy in the field. We agreed with AFD to cancel the final activities and to close the project. Final dissemination of the findings and follow-up activities will be completed early 2021.

To know more about this initiative, please check out our 2020 Annual Report.