The closure of USAID has had many implications. One of the less-reported ones: The loss of many critical datasets, such as the Demographic and Health Surveys, or DHS, which USAID has backed for years.
It’s prompted a question. Does it really make sense for countries and communities to rely on data collected by large institutions in the global north, and stored in northern research institutes and universities?
Haoyi Chen, lead of Citizen Data and Data Integration at the United Nations Statistics Division, says that it is time for countries to build resilient systems of their own.
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About the author
Catherine Davison
Catherine Davison is an independent journalist based in Delhi, India, writing on issues at the intersection of health, gender, and the environment.
