Data4SDGs - Al Kags — Strategist, Social Entrepreneur, Writer

November 6, 2023

Thoughts from the Data Festival (1): Power of Definitions in Data work

I travelled 40 hours from Nairobi to Uruguay to attend the first Data Festival after COVID-19. The event underscored how the world seems to have paused for those three years since 2020. On day zero, I attended a couple of exciting sessions. The first was co-organized ...

September 15, 2023

Citizen-Generated Data must be kept true to its essence: for citizens by citizens

In an ever-evolving world, the dynamic between citizens and governments is taking new forms. One such development is citizen-generated data, a concept becoming pivotal in the socio-political space. It's essential to think about its true essence. While it has gained traction with the established structures, ...

February 28, 2023

Administrative Data and the end of Government Statistics as we know it?

On the sidelines of the UN Statistical Commission meeting in New York, at the Collaborative on Administrative Data for Statistics, I saw the government of the future coming ever closer and faster. Here is my prediction. Yesterday, I attended a lunch meeting on the Collaborative on ...

November 28, 2022

Reflections from IGF2022: Digital Inclusion

Listen to the blogpost The Internet Governance Forum was one of my first global conferences to speak back in 2012 in Baku, Azerbaijan, and I have attended the conference almost every year since. I am happy that my first conference since the COVID-19 pandemic is The ...

August 23, 2021

Thinking about Hewlett Foundation’s Strategy and Decolonising Philanthropy

In this blogpost, I decided to be a bit presumptive - to pronounce myself on the idea of decolonising development (and by extension, philanthropy) and to make comments on Hewlett Foundation's Transparency Participation and Accountability Strategy for the coming five years. First, A Short story "What do ...

June 29, 2021

Thoughts that preoccupy me

In the course of living my life, I am usually preoccupied with key life questions that guide my thoughts, work and impact. This is a list of the issues/ questions that I am considering. I share them in no particular order. 1. How can government truly be by ...

April 1, 2021

Beyond the top 1% of Kenyans and the employed, there are Kenyans who don’t exist.

A couple of weeks ago, there was an article in the Business Daily that has costed me many nights of sleep and much consternation. That report has been a major distraction in my mind these past couple of weeks that I almost have been ...

May 8, 2019

Citizen Generated Data vs. Official Statistics

Should Citizen Generated Data be official? If not, does it make it any less essential? There is a tension that has existed in the past few years about the co-existence of official statistics on the one hand and citizen generated data on the other. The development ...

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