International Data Week 2018 took place from 5-8 November and was hosted by the Botswana Open Science and Data Forum in Gaborone. GODAN attended the conference, participating in both the 12th Plenary Meeting of the Research Data Alliance (RDA) and SciDataCon 2018. These events addressed the the frontiers and issues of data in research. GODAN actively participated in a session entitled: Inclusion of Digital Sequence Information (DSI) into the access and benefits sharing mechanism under the Nagoya Protocol.

GODAN Action co-organised a meeting on November 5, entitled How Agriculture in Africa Can Benefit from Data Collection. The meeting formed part of the  Interest Group on Agricultural Data (IGAD) pre-plenary meetings,  Participants from different sectors discussed data collection practices in Africa and the associated challenges. The benefits of digitalisation to farmers were highlighted, and training gaps in agricultural data management and interoperability were identified. Open Access to data, considering privacy rights, legislation (e.g. GDPR), codes of conduct, farmer’s rights and ownership issues was also discussed. Ensuring farmers understand their rights and have access to relevant data is essential to harnessing the benefits of data for farm management.

On November 6, GODAN Action hosted a workshop on “Open Data in Agriculture and Nutrition”.  The aim of the Workshop was for participants to gain more understanding of the definition, importance and applications of Open Data in agriculture and nutrition, leading to more effective and responsible use and sharing of data (using FAIR principles).

GODAN’s involvement emphasises the important role that it plays in promoting and advocating inclusive participation of development sectors, including: data publishers, data users, standards developers, programme managers, impact evaluators, policy makers and other stakeholders in Open Data for agriculture and nutrition.