Canada funds humanitarian data management project

Canada has agreed to fund a project aimed at enhancing the coordination and planning of humanitarian action in Cote d'Ivoire by improving the collection and processing of data on the impact of the four-month-old Ivorian conflict. The project involves the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and Cote d'Ivoire's Centre national de teledetection et d'information geographique (CNTIG - National Centre for Teledetection and Georgaphic Information). It aims to provide national and international humanitarian organisations with reliable data on areas such as population movement, food needs, access to health care and shelter. Under the project, three CNTIG employees attached to OCHA's Abidjan-based Regional Support Office (RSO) for West Africa will collect data from the CNTIG's databases. This information will be supplemented by data to be provided by OCHA, CNTIG Director Djamat Dubois told IRIN. OCHA, in turn, will make the data thus compiled widely accessible to potential users. The project agreement was signed on Thursday by Canadian Ambassador Emile Gauvreau, Carolyn McAskie, Special Envoy of the UN Secretary-General for the crisis in Cote d'Ivoire, and Guei Ble, permanent secretary of the Fonds de contrepartie ivoiro-canadien (FDCIC - Ivorian-Canadian Counterpart Fund), created to finance projects in Cote d'Ivoire. Canada, which had already provided Cote d'Ivoire with humanitarian funding to the sum of one billion CFA francs (about US $1.65 million) in the early days of the conflict, is giving 35 million CFA francs (US $57,600) for the project through the FDCIC.