A new grant by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has ushered GRID3 into its next phase. After five years of successfully working with countries throughout sub-Saharan Africa to generate, validate, and use geospatial data on population, settlements, infrastructure, and boundaries, GRID3 will now focus its energies primarily on Nigeria and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

Over the next four years, GRID3 will work intensively with these countries’ governments to build spatial data solutions that improve health systems. GRID3 will collaborate with governmental departments, non-governmental organizations, donors, and other partners to integrate core spatial data innovations into Nigeria and DRC’s data value chains. During this phase, GRID3 will create and improve core spatial data layers, provide training and capacity strengthening, support data use for analytics and decision making, as well as promote mainstreaming and sustainability of spatial data solutions.

This new phase follows a wider organizational transition. GRID3 was established in 2017 as a partnership of the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University, the Flowminder Foundation, the United Nations Population Fund, and the WorldPop group at the University of Southampton. In its new configuration, GRID3 is an independent non-profit led by CEO Marc Levy. GRID3 teams in Nigeria and DRC will continue to draw on support from leading technical experts at CIESIN and WorldPop.

For more information, reach out to info@nullgrid3.org

Grant details in the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation database