GODAN supports the proactive sharing of open data to make information about agriculture and nutrition available, accessible and usable to deal with the urgent challenge of ensuring world food security. It is a rapidly growing group, currently with over 940 partners from national governments, non-governmental, international and private sector organisations that have committed to a joint Statement of Purpose.
The initiative focuses on building high-level support among governments, policymakers, international organizations and business. GODAN promotes collaboration to harness the growing volume of data generated by new technologies to solve long-standing problems and to benefit farmers and the health of consumers. We encourage collaboration and cooperation between stakeholders in the sector.
At the 2012 G-8 Summit, G-8 leaders committed to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the next phase of a shared commitment to achieving global food security.
As part of this commitment, they agreed to “share relevant agricultural data available from G-8 countries with African partners and convene an international conference on Open Data for Agriculture, to develop options for the establishment of a global platform to make reliable agricultural and related information available to African farmers, researchers and policymakers, taking into account existing agricultural data systems.”
In April 2013, the commitment to convene an international conference on Open Data for Agriculture was fulfilled when the G8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture took place.
This conference worked to ‘obtain commitment and action from nations and relevant stakeholders to promote policies and invest in projects that open access to publicly funded global agriculturally relevant data streams, making such data readily accessible to users in Africa and world-wide, and ultimately supporting a sustainable increase in food security in developed and developing countries.
The GODAN initiative was a by-product of this conference and was announced at the Open Government Partnership Conference in October 2013.
See the video of the launch here.
Any organization that supports open access to agriculture and nutrition data. Our partners include government, donors, international and not-for-profit organizations and businesses.
See our Statement of Purpose page. We created a Theory of Change that is is a living document and will continue to be subject to discussion.
Contact us to find out more about how your organization can get involved in this growing network enquiries@godan.info or fill in the online form
GODAN partners support the shared principles based on GODAN’s Statement of Purpose
Agricultural and nutritional data to be available, accessible, usable and unrestricted
Partners aim to build high level policy and private sector support for open data
Encourage collaboration and cooperation across existing agriculture, nutrition and open data activities and stakeholders to solve long-standing global problems
GODAN partners commit to:
Host regular conversations with our peer multilateral and local organisations to identify and share best practices and determine how to more effectively share data and provide useable analysis for local application
Recruit new partners to GODAN
GODAN is supported by a small secretariat hosted by CABI in Wallingford, UK. You can contact the Secretariat team at – enquiries@godan.info
GODAN activities and its Secretariat are financially supported by the US Government, the UK Department for International Development (DFID), the Government of the Netherlands, FAO, Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA), GFAR, The Open Data Institute (ODI), the CGIAR and CABI. A full details of how GODAN Secretariat if funded and how funding is used can be found here.
At the GODAN Donor Meeting in January 2015 it was agreed that during the inception phase the GODAN Secretariat would be governed by a group of GODAN partners who have committed to provide funds or in-kind contributions to support the set up and on-going running of the Secretariat.
Currently, those partners are: the US Government, the UK’s DFID, the Netherlands Government, the Open Data Institute, FAO, CTA, CABI, CGIAR and GFAR. Donor meetings will be chaired by Jaime Adams from the Office of the Chief Scientist. She is also the main point of contact between the Donor Group and the Secretariat.
All matters of governance and partner representation were reviewed in a Donor Steering Committee in January 2016 and the original Inception Report was approved.
