The Ga East Municipal Assembly (GEMA) and the Ghana Statistical Service, in partnership with GIZ, have outdoored two mobile Apps to help address the sanitation challenges, and serve as a medium for reporting on Gender-based violence. The Apps, namely, the ‘CleanApp Ghana’ developed by CERSGIS and ‘Let’s Talk’ developed on OA Holdings were designed to use Citizen-Generated Data (CGD), with GIZ providing the financial and technical support in collaboration with the Ghana Statistical Service (GSS). AO Holdings is the developer of the ‘Let’s Talk App’ while the ‘CleanApp Ghana App’ was developed by CERSGIS. The project was first piloted in the Ga East Municipality and three others namely Ho, Techiman and West Gonja Municipalities, in 2020 and it is now being scaled up nationwide. The move is aimed at leveraging technology and innovation to collect Citizen-Generated Data on Waste and Gender-based violence to be used for effective waste management in the country. The objective of the Project is to explore the potential of CGD as a complementary data source for official statistics through pilot projects by exploring the use of CGD methodologies to collect data on Gender-Based Violence (GBV) and solid waste management for SDGs 5.2.2; 11.7.2; 16.1.3; 11.6.1. It is also to augment statistics production for evidence-based decision-making at the sub-national level and document and share learning with National Statistical Systems and evidence community. Mrs Elizabeth Kaakie Mann, Municipal Chief Executive, GEMA launching the project Apps, said prior to the launch a two-day training workshop was organized for the District Technical Team on how to use them and to be able to transfer the knowledge acquired to the community members during the sensitization activities. She appealed to the residents to embrace the Apps, share it on their various WhatsApp group platforms, and educate their members to effectively use the Apps to report their complaints and challenges pertaining to sanitation and gender-based violence within their community as it serves as a faster and more accurate means to address their grievances. She said both Apps could be accessed by downloading and installing it from the Google Play Store on an android phone or through the short codes: *902*58#, for the CleanApp and *800*818# for the ‘Let’s Talk’ App.
Source: Ghana News Agency