Finding well-documented information on Ethiopia’s history, economy, and anything else is quite challenging, making Ethiopia a data desert.
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Data is the most valuable commodity of the digital age. It’s a foundational element in today’s economy, determining economic, political, and social decisions. No less than economic resources like electricity, oil, or gold, data has become vital. By 2025, the world is projected to have captured, created, copied, and consumed 181 zettabytes(181 trillion GB) of data, a 21% increase from the year 2024. China and the US, with their large population and high internet penetration, emerge as the largest data generators. They also have the biggest data market with billions in capital.
Data is an asset with ever-increasing value; that value is ingrained in the insights it provides. Companies are making billions by utilizing and selling it. Over half of the 10 biggest firms by market capitalization are in data businesses. Some crafted their core businesses around it, providing targeted advertising, personalization of products and services, offering data-driven insights, and selling it to other vendors. Companies with good data management systems are getting significantly higher valuations by accounting for data among their assets.
But not in Ethiopia
Ethiopia, unlike those who woke up to the potential and are expanding on it, is lurking behind. You might as well have been a victim of this national data desert. Looking for a stat, which you were very sure the relevant government bureau would publish, at least, you were disappointed. After surfing the internet for a while, going deeper and changing queries, you just came to a dead end. No stats in sight. Options? You could get an official letter for cooperation, go to the Ethiopian Statistical Services in person, survive the long queue and bureaucracy to take a poor bet at success.
At times, the most you can get is an official’s post on an X page. Looking through the government agency’s website, the data is simply nonexistent. Imagine an investor with millions tossing the dice for success. Policy makers, rather than rationalising based on data, are second-guessing from their guts. Businesses fall into a vicious cycle of inefficiency because they just can’t pinpoint a pattern in their market.
Official numbers are thrown at us here and there. Incapable of challenging whether it’s grounded in facts, we comply. Anyone can make outrageous claims, and the infuriated others are unable to refute them based on data. Accepting statements just because they couldn’t be proved otherwise has crippled people in the social and political spheres as well. Data holds notable power, and when one is deprived of it, the loudest voices get heard, not the ones with factuality. This is no way for a country’s development.
Too complicated to solve?
In the last two decades, global data has shown a drastic surge, and surprisingly, 90% of what is now in store has been generated in the past two years. In sync, Ethiopia has an increasing rate of research production, which is, however, challenged by inferior quality. This created a scenario where the cause and effect continually switch places, with poor research pinned on the pervasive data deficiency. As it happens, some data isn’t missing but unavailable. Unavailable because it’s stacked inside institutions’ racks confined in obsolete and undigitized formats, or it’s scattered across files of all structures. The problem is not just data generation but organisation.
Developing a data-driven culture is crucial to shaping strategies towards tackling the data crisis. All establishments, government and private, need to think in data. Action comes from conviction. As much as they invest in their core businesses, so should they in data management. In parallel, the existing data in chaos needs to be digitised, structured, contextualised, and made available. No need to exhaust intuition, now that there is data. Think of the power businesses, policy makers, and individuals harness by leveraging it.
