Known as “The Digis,” the Digital Development Awards celebrate USAID projects and activities that embrace the Agency’s strategic goals of improving development and humanitarian assistance outcomes through the use of digital technology and strengthening open, secure, and inclusive digital ecosystems. These ecosystems can help drive economic empowerment and financial inclusion, advance national security, support accountability and transparency in governance, and make development and humanitarian assistance more efficient and effective.
PMI VectorLink Zambia is one of the five winners of the 2022 Digi Awards announced today by Deputy Administrator Isobel Coleman
Selected from among nearly 200 applicants, the project is recognized for deploying a suite of digital tools to support map-based data collection, monitoring, and capacity building to improve malaria control programs at the sub-district level.
These new microplanning maps, coupled with support during the planning processes, gave Zambia’s National Malaria Elimination Program a deeper level of insight into the geographic distribution of remote communities and better population estimates down to the village, which is essential for planning intervention campaigns.
Photo by AkrosAs a result, coverage of malaria control campaigns in hard-to-reach areas across Zambia has increased. For example, an estimated 100 percent of villages in the high burden, hard-to-reach district of Nchelenge, in Zambia’s Luapula Province, were reached with either insecticide-treated nets or indoor residual spraying in 2020.
Additionally, this activity has strengthened local capacity for geospatial data familiarity and use, and use of accurate, timely data for decision-making more generally—building a culture around data use and technology.
For full details, please see the announcement on Digi Award web page.