When the Ghana Statistical Service, Vodafone Ghana, and the Flowminder Foundation dreamed up their Data for Good partnership, no one knew a global pandemic would soon put it to work.
During the 2017 Ghana National Data Roadmap process, which was supported by the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data, the Ghana Statistical Services (GSS) re-kindled conversations with key stakeholders – resulting in the establishment of a public-private partnership with Vodafone Ghana and the Flowminder Foundation, with support from Hewlett Foundation.
The partnership aims to harness anonymized and aggregated mobile data to advance the production of official statistics. This new data source provides useful insights into Ghanaians’ mobility, making it useful for public health planning and disaster preparedness, among other things. And now, authorities are making use of this data to inform their COVID-19 responses.