Rwanda
Stephen Abbott Pugh is setting up Sobanukirwa, a civic technology company in Rwanda. Prior to moving to Kigali, he was the head of digital projects for the UK Parliament and spent six years as a project manager for the Guardian's website.
Rwanda ranked #44 in the 2014 Open Data Index / Other stories from Africa
Rwanda's institutions have made strides over the last few years in opening up some of the data held within the government and I was keen to highlight the progress made by including the country in the open data index for the first time.
Rwanda has developed good practises in terms of releasing national statistics and geodata in open formats while a lot of other official information is available for free online but locked away in databases or PDFs. Work is currently underway to speed up the adoption of open data publishing in the country and an open data czar has been appointed in the Prime Minister's office.
I'd like to thank Rajiv Ranjan from the National Institute of Statistics of Rwanda for his help with locating many of the datasets.
The Global Open Data Index is important not only as a way to spark competition between countries in terms of transparency but also as a great showcase of the latest technologies being used being used to release the data. For a country like Rwanda which is seeking to speedily foster a knowledge-based economy, it is imperative to be able to learn quickly from other countries and the index provides a valuable resource to promote this accelerated learning curve.
I hope that by highlighting the Rwandan data available, more developers inside and outside of the country will use their initiative to create user-focused services or applications which make the most of the available health, statistical or geo data.
