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In the midst of the worst drought to afflict the Horn of Africa in 60 years, officials in Djibouti struggle to respond to the growing needs. As of late July 2011, the UN estimated that the number of drought-affected refugees in Djibouti had exceeded 18,000, with another 165,000 people in urgent need of food assistance. 1
The looming humanitarian crisis in Djibouti points to another critical longstanding need: the ability of the Government of Djibouti to quickly process, analyze, and disseminate data from the field, to guide all national development efforts, including |
© UNICEF/NYHQ2006-0199/Kamber
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relief. To this end, the country is actively moving forward with implementing DevInfo database technology to strengthen the current national statistical data management system.
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Key staff from Djibouti’s Direction de la Statistiques et des Etudes Démographiques (DISED), government line ministries and international development partners received in-depth training in DevInfo database technology in July 2011. The objective of the training was to equip line ministries and development partners with the skills to develop their own sector-specific/agency-specific databases, under the supervision of DISED. The intended results? Greater data sharing among country stakeholders using a common database platform, and increased availability of data to support targeted decision making and results-based planning.
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DevInfo training workshop, Djibouti |
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| In a parallel effort, the Government of Djibouti has also endorsed the decision to train a new generation of university students in DevInfo database technology, to build skills at an early age in the use of development statistics. The University of Djibouti will begin offering a new course, “Senior Statistical Technicians,” in September 2011, in partnership with DISED and the Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Statistique et d’Economie Appliquée (ENSEA) in Abidjan, Cote |
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d’Ivoire. DevInfo will be taught as one of the basic course units, in order to equip graduates with the needed technical skills to support ongoing data management initiatives within various country agencies and organizations.
According to Dr. Jeeveeta Agnihotri, Technical Advisor, DevInfo Support Group, “The implementation of DevInfo at the university level in Djibouti is quite strategic for a country with a relatively small population (under 900,000). DISED is looking forward to recruiting high-quality statistical technicians already trained in DevInfo, who can help create databases and publish data from surveys and reports.”
With DevInfo becoming established in Djibouti, the nation is not only strengthening its statistical capacity for data management but also laying a firm foundation for effective crisis response to humanitarian challenges. |
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Data making a difference. |
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| For more information, please contact Konate Sekou Tidiani, Ingénieur Statisticien/DU Epidémiologie, Direction Nationale de la Statistique (DISED) at st_konate@yahoo.com, or Toshiko Takahashi, Programme Officer, Monitoring and Evaluation/Social Policy, UNICEF Djibouti, at ttakahashi@unicef.org.
1 Eastern Africa: Drought – Humanitarian Snapshot (as of 29 Jul 2011), UN OCHA, accessed at http://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/
HoA%20Humanitarian%20Snapshot%2029%20July%202011_0.pdf
on 11 August 2011.
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