Authored by Nick Hargreaves and cross posted from his blog. It’s slightly over two years since the government of Kenya launched the Kenya Open Data portal; a move that was hailed around the globe and seen by many as a path towards transparency in a corruption ridden government. Kenya became the second, after Morocco, in…
Read articleAfrican Data Journalists and Code for Africa Hacktavists this week traveled to Nepal to be part of the country’s Open Data Initiative launch. The grassroots initiative dubbed Open Nepal week, is a series of week-long activities that is aimed to catalyze and spur the Open Data Movement in Nepal. The week began with a Media…
Read articleSince 2012, the Open Institute, in partnership with the World Bank Institute, Africa Media Initiative and Google, has been running data bootcamps for various intermediaries and user groups across multiple channels. These camps are typically an intense 2-3 day event, that immerse users into the value of Open Data, teaches them new skills in Open…
Read articleIn May 2013, delegates convened in Mombasa for the first OGP Africa Regional Meeting; a two-day conference that brought together representatives from Civil Society Organisations, Academia, Open Government Partnership participating countries and donor organisations to discuss new ways of driving Open Government forward in Africa. Emerging from the discussions held during the meeting was concern…
Read articleI have spent the last couple of days in Wote, Makueni County with Sam Lee and Felipe Estefaan from the World Bank Institute in Washington DC. I’ve been here before a couple of times and it always gives me great pleasure to make new contacts and learn more about the people and their lives. This…
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The Open Institute is excited to announce the Global Open Data Initiative, which it is spearheading together with the Sunlight Foundation, Worldwide Web Foundation, Open Knowledge Foundation and Fundar. The Open Data Movement globally has grown exponentially over the past four years. In the last two years, it has gained significant momentum in Africa – starting…
Read articleThere’s a basic premise held by many in the citizen agency space. Empower citizens with the right information and the right tools and they will change the governance environment for better. This premise is encoded in just about any program / initiative focused on improving service delivery in Africa. The premise is broken. “The late…
Read articleThe Open Knowledge Foundation, in partnership with the Open Institute in Kenya and the African Media Initiative have submitted a proposal to the Knight News Challenge on Open Government: AfricanSpending – Monitoring the Money. We want to build a platform (leveraging OpenSpending) for journalists and civil society to track public money and mineral wealth across Africa…
Read article Perhaps to answer the question we should start by reviewing what we hoped to do when we started the process. The KODI task force had four streams of activities: Gathering & collating data – At the time that we started this process, any data that the government had, was in disparate places – mostly in…
Read articleBelow the speech delivered by Jay Bhalla, Executive Director of The Open Institute Trust, during the Code4Kenya Launch Event held on the 24th of January 2013. A very good morning to everyone. It’s been slightly over a year and a half since Kenya embarked on its ambitious Open Data Initiative. At the time there were great hopes…
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