05/26/2026
As countries continue navigating the long-term effects of global aid disruptions, conversations around sustainable data systems, Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI), and resilient financing are becoming increasingly urgent.
In a new blog, our CEO, Josh Powell, and Open Data Watch Managing Director, Shaida Badiee, with Lorenz Noe, Deirdre Appel, Eric Swanson, and Ashlin Simpson, reflect on how funding disruptions exposed long-standing vulnerabilities across critical health and gender data systems and how countries across Africa are responding.
From regional cooperation and domestic resource mobilization to more sustainable, nationally integrated digital ecosystems, countries are increasingly focused on strengthening long-term control over how data are collected, managed, and shared. The piece also explores what it will take to build more sustainable, locally led data systems and how development partners can support resilience in the face of future funding shocks.
This conversation will continue at next week, where Josh will join an Open Data Watch session debating whether the data community is facing a true systemic crisis requiring transformative change, or whether existing approaches can still evolve and adapt.
Full blog: https://developmentgateway.org/blog/a-year-after-usaid-reclaiming-control-of-data-systems/
Just months after the 2025 U.S. aid freeze was announced, we published a blog post warning that the USAID cuts would result in a data crisis, with some countries losing access to their digital health data. This blog explores how those systems – and the countries relying on them – have fared near...
