Charting Africa’s Progress: African Development Bank launches MapAfrica 2.0

The African Development Bank has released a new online tool that enables anyone in the world to see at a glance how the Bank’s projects are boosting Africa’s economies and making Africans’ lives better.

MapAfrica 2.0 is an interactive online portal that shows where the Bank is making an impact on the continent — and how 800 of the Bank’s projects relate to its “High 5” development priorities: Light up and power Africa, Feed Africa, Industrialise Africa, Integrate Africa, and Improve the quality of life for the African people.

As well as making the Bank’s work visible to a global audience, the portal will give the Bank’s stakeholders a better understanding of how the Bank’s activities contribute to local development – and helps the Bank to ensure it allocates its resources to greatest effect.

MapAfrica 2.0, which updates the first version of the portal, was launched on Thursdsay, June 30, 2016 in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, during the second meeting of the Fourteenth Replenishment of the African Development Fund (ADF-14), as part of the Results Measurement Framework presentation.

Unveiling the platform, Simon Mizrahi, Director of the AfDB’s Quality Control and Results Department, said, “This dynamic tool enables the Bank to provide transparent and equal access to its work across Africa. It is an effort to showcase our results and to track our projects on the ground.”

MapAfrica 2.0, which uses standards laid down by the International Aid Transparency Initiative, reflects the Bank’s commitment to openness, which has seen the AfDB ranked, in April 2016, for the third consecutive year as one of the world’s 10 most open and transparent organizations, by Publish What You Fund.

With MapAfrica, developed by the Bank in partnership with the information agency Development Gateway, web users can track the Bank’s projects throughout Africa, zooming in on a region or country and browsing the icons corresponding to the Bank’s “High 5” priorities.

“MapAfrica allows the AfDB to present its investments and results in a simple and more intuitive way, bringing the institution closer to the people they serve,” said Jean-Louis Sarbib, the CEO of Development Gateway. Donors provide billions of dollars in development assistance every year, but tracking the results has been challenging without information on individual development aid activities.

Results stories have been developed to present detailed accounts of some completed projects. These supply details about the beneficiaries of the project, the approach taken, the main results and the lessons learned.

In the future, the Bank aims to use the tool to improve the planning of its projects on the ground and to understand where development gaps lie.

MapAfrica 2.0 is available at mapafrica.afdb.org on desktop and mobile devices.