Enabling data access to support innovation in decision agriculture: soil health, agronomy and fertilizer

The project aims to facilitate better data-driven decisions in the BMGF Decision Agriculture investments and the national systems where these investments operate. The goals is to co-create tools and guidelines and produce recommendations within the data domain of soil and agronomy, in the target regions of Ethiopia and India. The project will also work alongside Programme Officers to ensure good practice at a Foundational level. The project will follow a 'use case' approach (where specific domains, regions or projects are chosen to encourage stakeholders to adopt best practices towards data access, management, and sharing to better support all actors in the broader 'data ecosystem', and, together with partners, they will be encouraged to act as champions and agents of change. CABI will generate key insights into entry points, pain points, challenges and needs within the data domain and region and, as a result, we will propose incentive systems to improve practice. Key project activities include: (a) Developing in-country engagement strategies for Ethiopia and India; (b) Developing use case-specific data ecosystem maps; (c) A series of training to improve data literacy and data management; (d) Development of a FAIR data toolkit with a set of capacity-building resources for programme officers and grantees; (e) Engagement with other donors for alignment of recommendations; (f) Supporting the implementation of the Ethiopia Soil and Agronomy Data Policy Sharing (SADS); and (g) Research pieces on the value of data governance and incentive frameworks.