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
David Ainsworth@daveainsworth4
David Ainsworth is business editor at Devex, where he writes about finance and funding issues for development institutions. He was previously a senior writer and editor for magazines specializing in nonprofits in the U.K. and worked as a policy and communications specialist in the nonprofit sector for a number of years. His team specializes in understanding reports and data and what it teaches us about how development functions.
