On 28 October Toon Driesen, Junior Assistant for BTC, presented Maisha Bora’s digital M&E tools at BTC headquarters in Brussels. A Digital Talk about hardware and software but foremost about the practical implications of dealing with digital tools and data in development programmes.

In the Maisha Bora programme in Northern Tanzania BTC staff have set-up a range of digital tools for monitoring and evaluating their multi-actor food security programme. BTC introduced tablets, web surveys, a cloud-based server and data management tools based on the free and open source solutions offered by OpenDataKit, KoboToolbox and Public Tableau.

Six months after introducing this integrated data and knowledge management system and extensively training local government officers, BTC is taking stock of their digital journey so far. The first results are promising: the tools have proven to be very effective for collecting and analysing a wide variety of data, reacting fast on emerging issues and building capacity of local government partners to monitor and coordinate programmes effectively.

More information on www.maishabora-tz.org