The National ICT Week (SNI) is an annual event in Burkina Faso dedicated to promote ICT. Each year, thousands of people are introduced to the basics of operating computers; impactful ICT initiatives are also rewarded by a host of prizes. This year’s event, the 12th edition, was hosted by the Ministry of Digital Economy from May 31st to June 4th with the theme of ICT and sustainable development.

The panelists of the conference

The Burkina Open Data Initiative (BODI) was represented by its Deputy Manager, Mr. Malick Tapsoba. He gave an introductory speech that gave the audience a general idea as to what open data is about. He then continued by presenting some of the key accomplishments of BODI so far:

• NENDO, a web application developed with data on education available on the Burkina Faso open data portal, was presented as an example of how open data can be used to boost accountability in education systems

• the GIS data collected on drinkable water wells has become a key decision-making tool toward the achievement of ‘Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6: ‘Ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all.’

• The open election project: a web platform that allowed the visualization of both the 2015 presidential and legislative election results. The visualizations were created almost in real-time, as fast as the data was released by the electoral commission. This project, initiated by BODI, has strongly contributed to the acceptance of the election’s results by all contenders.

Some ongoing projects of BODI were also presented:

• Open Data and government procurement tracking project. This project aims to improve transparency in the government’s budget spending and to unlock opportunities for enterprises based on market competition.

• Open Data to monitor both foreign funds and domestic funds: “When the data are not available and open, how can we measure progress toward Sustainable Development Goals?”, said Mr. Tapsoba.

Mr. Tapsoba also announced that a hackathon had been organised to showcase the use of open data and that the results would be revealed at the closing ceremony of SNI. One participant, a student who took part in the hackathon, called for more initiatives like these. He said that he strongly appreciated the way hackathons allow programmers and non-programmers to work together to build data applications and, for him, this helps to demystify ICT in general.

Mr. Sonde Amadou, CEO of Dunya Technology and one of the panelists, spoke about Smart Cities: African cities are growing fast, he said, and Ouagadougou, the capital city of Burkina Faso, is one of them. But Open GIS Data, he continued, is a stumbling block for Smart Cities and work is needed in this area.

Dr. Moumini Savadogo, IUCN Head Country Programme, talked about the IUCN Red List of threatened, critically endangered, endangered and vulnerable species in Africa. This list helps raise awareness and encourages better informed decisions for the conservation of nature, something critical for sustainable development.

The 400 participants of the conference were well served and I was confident that most of them can now be considered as open data advocates. As a School of Data Fellow, I made sure to speak after the panelists, pointing out the importance of strong institutions supported by transparency and accountability (SDG 16) for achieving the 2030 agenda in general. So I encouraged the audience to take a look at Open Data portals, notably BODI and EITI, for transparency in the extractive industry, including the environmental impact. I also mentioned the GODAN initiative for SDG 02 and called the panelist Malick Tapsoba to develop more on that. The open data community of Burkina Faso has made that day one more step on its journey towards building a stronger open data community and data literacy advocates.

As a 2016 School of Data Fellow, my focus area of work is Extractives Data and I work with NRGI to advance data literacy in that sector in Africa, particularly in Burkina Faso.

Burkina Faso is experiencing a mining boom mainly due to the exploitation of gold. With a production of 5.6 tons of gold in 2008, Burkina Faso rose to 36.5 tons of gold exported in 2015 and the projection for 2016 is about 39.6 tons. In terms of revenues, in 2015, the share of mining in budgetary revenues was estimated at about 170 billion CFA francs (about $280 million). This represents a major development challenge for the country and in particular for the local communities around mining sites. Work to monitor and inform communities on these issues is of paramount importance and it is necessary to see the actors involved in that work.

So, a good starting point was to map the community around Extractives Data in Burkina Faso. From May 26th to July 12th 2016, I was able to achieve a clear understanding of who is involved in what and the challenges they face.

Burkina Faso main Civil Society Organizations Coalition (SPONG) Annual Assembly

The open data and Extractives community can be split into 3 categories: Government bodies and Institutes, media and individual data journalists, and Civil Society Organisations.

Government bodies and Institutes

The two main relevant government institutions are the Information and Communication Technology Promotion National Agency (ANPTIC), which leads the Open Data community in Burkina Faso along with the Burkina Open Data initiative (BODI). There are also Institutes such as the National Institute of Statistics and Demography (INSD), the Research Institute for Development (IRD) and the Institute of Science of Population (ISSP), which undertake many socio-economic studies on the impact of mining in Burkina Faso. These Government bodies and Institutes are regularly invited by the ANPTIC to meet, in order to strengthen their relationship and encourage them to open the data in their possession.

Media

The media play a key role in covering all events related to extractives. But their work doesn’t stop there. Some media organisations are even performing in-depth analysis of data to fully inform the country’s citizens. Among the Burkinabe investigative journalists, known for their sharp insights on political issues, some took the decision to follow socio-economic courses, with the aim of becoming better armed for achieving transparency and fighting corruption. The gold mining sector, in particular, is a regular subject of investigation.

Lefaso.net, Burkina24, the blog “Le blog sam la touch” (which features all hot subjects in Burkina Faso), l’Indépendant, l’Économiste du Faso (the first economic weekly journal of Burkina Faso), l’Évènement (a monthly newspaper), and Le Pays are major media actors. Individual data journalists, specifically Justin Yarga and Stella Nana, are among those that are shaking the web with interesting insights around Extractives.

Their main data sources are research institutes and some field surveys and some of the journalists use the EITI data portal to communicate their findings.

Civil Society Organizations (CSOs)

The main CSOs involved in Extractives Data are:

• “Chambre des mines” (CMB), a non-profit organization representing the mining private sector. CMB collects economic and environmental data from the mining companies;

• EITI Burkina Faso. When it comes to advancing Open Data in Extractives, the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI), supported by the World Bank Group through a Multi-Donor Trust Fund (MDTF), is a central actor. Burkina Faso* *produces annual EITI reports that disclose the production and revenue of the extractive industries. The latest report published is from 2013;

• Open Burkina is a young organization of activists that are active in Burkina Faso’s Open Data community;

• Open Street Map Burkina is concerned about the spatial distribution of the mining sites;

• BEOG NEERE, an NGO working for human rights, transparency and accountability has conducted studies on gold mining and child labour in Burkina Faso;

• Diakonia, Oxfam, Plan Burkina, SOS Sahel International Burkina Faso are major International NGOs that are interested in the social, economic and environmental impact of mining;

• “Publish what you pay – Burkina Faso“. Publish What You Pay is a coalition of CSOs working for transparency and accountability, advocating at the policy level for people to get the most benefit of the flourishing mining sector;

• ORCADE (Organization for the Reinforcement of Development Capacity) is also advocating at the policy level for open contracts and for the adoption of a mining code that is beneficial to local communities.

Data availability and trainings as the main challenge

Several events gather the community through the year. I have been fortunate enough to attend some of this year’s major events:

• SEMICA, I attended the SEMICA (the annual gathering of actors involved in mining and energy), held in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso from May 26th to May 28th.

• The SNI, (the National ICT Week) which took place in Ouagadougou from 31st of May to the 4th of June, was also a great place to meet journalists and data journalists interested in mining and sustainable development.

• The 3rd event I attended was the General Assembly of SPONG (the main coalition of Civil Society Organizations in Burkina Faso) held in Ouagadougou the 31st of May.

I use these opportunities to administer questionnaires to the people I met at these events, in order to get some insight into their relationship with other actors in the field, the challenges they face in their work and their needs.

As revealed by the answers to the questionnaire, the main challenge of this otherwise vibrant community is still to get companies to release data. Building a strong relationship among community members has helped overcome this issue. “We are facing difficulties to convince data producers to shake things up. But we take it more as a challenge :-)”, said Idriss Tinto, technical manager at BODI. Mr Tinto continued by pointing to the need of more funds to overcome that challenge.

Capacity building is also one the recurrent needs expressed by members of the community. “Getting more access to data and a more tailored and complete training on data processing and data analysis are the main needs”; said Abdou Zouré, Editor-in-chief at Burkina24. Inna Guenda-Segueda, communication manager at CMB, pointed to the need of training on the process to collect data as disaggregated as possible from mining companies. Hence, specific trainings on the data pipeline are needed to support both data journalists and Civil Society Organizations.

The Open Data Community

The Burkina Open Data Initiative (BODI), set by the National Agency for the Promotion of ICT (ANPTIC), leads the open data community in Burkina Faso. Created in 2013, BODI has undertaken many activities, including building a strong community of local Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) and Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs), Government Bodies and International Organizations. The Open Data Portal is also one of BODI’s key achievements. At the present time, nearly 200 data sets have been released.

Workshop at ANPTIC headquarters for the development of the NENDO Application

To engage more people around the Open Data Initiative, BODI organises workshops and conferences in order to strengthen its partnerships with relevant stakeholders.

Education data as a starting point

In fact, data on Education has been released in partnership with the Ministry of Education, but also with the partnership of local communities. The whole process started in April 2014, in the coworking space Jokkolabs, with a workshop with Government bodies, the National Agency of Statistics and Demography, The World Bank, OpenStreetMap Burkina and many NGOs.

The Education dataset serves also as a case study for BODI to showcase the benefits of Open Data. For instance, a Web Application called NENDO is being developed. The NENDO Application shows a multilayer digital map of primary schools and kindergartens with their characteristics. CSOs like Open Burkina, BEOG NEERE, JokkoLabs, OuagaLab and also the Ministry of Education were associated in the Development of NENDO through a series of workshops and bootcamps organised at ANPTIC headquarters.

Recently, always with the spirit of inclusiveness, BODI approached the Agriculture, Water and Environment Sectors. A workshop was conducted on December 2015, with the participation of relevant stakeholders of the above sectors, including IRC Wash, the Ministries in charge of Agriculture, Water, Environment, and their respective specialised bodies. The aim was to present the work already achieved in releasing data regarding drinkable water wells. Malick Tapsoba, Deputy Manager of BODI, encouraged the ministries to release more data in their possession, in order to better inform decisions at all stages and trigger innovation for the benefit of all.The World Bank is the main funder of all the initiatives cited above.

Events and conferences as additional initiatives

Some other BODI initiatives were the 2016 Open Data Day, co-organised with Open Knowledge International (OKI) Burkina Faso, and the NGO BEOG NEERE. Open Street Map (OSM), Open Burkina, Geek Developers Network (GDN) and the Fablab Ouagalab were also present on March 5th 2016.

The academic world cannot be left behind, so a series of conferences were held in the three major universities of the country with the theme “Open Data and Academia: Challenges and Opportunities”. The University Aube Nouvelle hosted its conference on April 13th, followed one week later by the University of Bobo Dioulasso and by the University of Ouagadougou on April 28th.

Some media, mainly online media like Burkina24 and LeFaso.net, are always associated with BODI activities. These media are not only covering BODI’s events but they are participating as key data practitioners for the eclosion of a stronger data journalism community. In fact, data journalism trainings are organised for media, including bloggers, by the ANPTIC and BODI’s team.

All these conferences and workshops have helped build and strengthen a diversified community around open data in Burkina Faso but some major work remains to be done. For instance, for Extractives Data, a parallel open data community for Extractives has emerged around EITI Burkina Faso and the Burkina Chamber of Mines (CMB). I see my School of Data Fellowship as a huge opportunity to link those communities. In the next article, I will look at the Open Data and Extractives community in Burkina Faso.