This is very cool. A team of researchers from Development Gateway and AidData have worked with the World Bank to add detailed subnational geographical information to all of the Bank’s active projects in the Africa and Latin America region. This isn’t just pins in a map showing the country where the money is spent: they have looked through the project documentation to find out as far as possible the geographic coordinates of the actual locations where aid the activities take place.
This video by AidData explains brilliantly what geocoding means, and why its important. Take a look:
Serious kudos to the World Bank, Development Gateway and AidData for doing this work. Geocoding is going to have a huge impact on improving the accountability and effectiveness of aid. By geocoding these World Bank projects manually, the team has demonstrated that geocoding aid is feasible. As Development Gateway’s Steve Davenport says in the video: “This is not that difficult”.
If the new standards for publishing aid information that are being designed by donors under the International Aid Transparency Initiative include appropriate standards for geo-coding of all aid activities, then it won’t be necessary for these projects to be coded by hand in future. The people funding the projects would geocode their projects from the outset, and this information would be included in the data feeds, so everyone will have more comprehensive, more accurate and more precise about who is doing what, and where.
If you want more background, aidinfo’s paper Show Me The Money explains how geo-coding, traceability and transaction level details make a powerful combination for improving the effectiveness and accountability of aid.
H/T: my colleagues at aidinfo