MEMBER OUTCOME 2024 – 2025

Transboundary Data Flows - UNEP, GIZ, Action Lab

Architect and operationalize a regional framework for seamless, secure, and interoperable exchange of environmental intelligence across East Africa—breaking down legal, political, and institutional silos so that critical hydro-met and agricultural risk data can move across borders fast enough to support proactive, evidence-based regional climate resilience. This includes standardising 119+ priority datasets and aligning 16 national legislative contexts to enable trusted cross-border data sharing.

Data Flows UNEP GIZ

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Data Governance

UNEP, GIZ, Action Lab

OUR ROLE

IDI's Role & Contribution

IDI served as the systems-design and governance partner—convening multi-country stakeholders, translating complex technical and legal realities into shared problem definitions, and co-designing the disciplined backbone for regional data exchange. IDI led end-to-end process design and facilitation, supported development of interoperability and data standardisation requirements, structured governance instruments, synthesised evidence into decision-ready outputs.

Key Insight

"The most powerful interventions happen when communities are treated as co-designers, not beneficiaries. By embedding ourselves in the problem space, we uncovered the systemic roots of the challenge and built solutions that last."

The Problem

Three interlocking failures created a system where continuity of care was structurally impossible.

Fragmented care

Architecting and operationalizing a regional framework for environmental data exchange across East Africa.

Lost record continuity

Communities lacked access to tools and infrastructure to address the underlying challenge.

Invisible complications

Multiple actors worked in silos, preventing coordinated responses that could have amplified impact.

Our Approach

A systemic Evidence-to-Action cycle: deep systems mapping (technical infrastructure audits + legal feasibility reviews) to identify choke points; strategic prototyping through co-creation design labs to develop politically viable, technically feasible governance and operating instruments (including fast-track disaster alert clauses); and embedded capacity building to institutionalise adoption through trained subnational officers and implementers.

Outputs & Results

Measurable outcomes achieved through the programme's core activities.

COUNTRIES PARTICIPATING

3×

Improvement in service delivery efficiency

500+

Community members directly impacted

Partner organisations engaged

85%

Satisfaction rate among beneficiaries

2 yrs

Sustained operation post-project

OUTCOME

Project Outcome & Impact

A replicable model for transboundary environmental data governance that strengthens regional trust and coordination, contributes to broader African data sovereignty efforts, and improves readiness for climate shocks by enabling faster, more reliable cross-border information flows designed to compress emergency response timelines (e.g., toward <15 minutes for alerts) while protecting livelihoods and supporting cooperative management of shared natural resources.