OCHA's humanitarian data platform empowers women
By Kate Katch and Cosette Cordova
More than two billion people worldwide have no internet access or digital literacy. They are cut off from information that could help them access services, improve livelihoods and prepare for climate and economic shocks. The divide is worse for people living in poverty, in crisis-affected countries and in remote areas, especially women. But OCHA’s Humanitarian Data Exchange (HDX), is helping to close this gap by making humanitarian data easier to find and use.
Since 2014, HDX, which hosts more than 19,000 datasets from over 200 organizations, has functioned as a common data service for the humanitarian community and beyond.
Sauti, which means ‘voice’ in Swahili, is a non-governmental organization in East Africa that uses HDX to access trusted datasets, including market prices of agricultural produce, exchange rates, food security, and climate data. It translates this information into short, simple messages in local languages, and delivers it to basic mobile phones via USSD (uses certain numbers to send text messages), SMS, or WhatsApp. No Internet or smartphone required.
Sauti’s platform is used by more than 150,000 farmers and small-scale traders in Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, most of them women with low connectivity. People use the platform to decide where to buy and sell goods, plan routes that reduce food spoilage, and locate nearby health and humanitarian services.
In September 2025, with support from the International Organization for Migration, the platform expanded to reach thousands of displaced women in Somalia, providing information to help them work safely and access essential protection services, including gender-based violence support and referrals.
Bridging the gap
Two-thirds of women in East Africa trade staple food crops to support their families and local economies, yet they often lack access to information that would help grow their business and avoid exploitation. In Somalia, displacement, marginalization, and poor infrastructure have left many women and girls isolated, often made worse by gatekeepers: self appointed individuals who control information and restrict access to assistance.
Despite low internet use, mobile phone ownership is high across East Africa. In Somalia, 85 per cent of people own a basic mobile phone. Sauti recognized this opportunity and set out to close the information gap for rural and displaced women by delivering relevant information directly to their phones.
“For a small organization like Sauti, finding credible data and building automated pipelines to clean and update it takes considerable time and resources,” said Lance Hadley, Sauti’s Chief Executive Officer.
The challenge was not just delivering the information, but finding trustworthy, timely data that reflects the daily reality on the ground, and then turning disparate, technical data into something people can use to make decisions.
To bridge this gap, Sauti turned to HDX.
Open data empowers
HDX is critical to Sauti’s success. It provides about half of the data for the Somalia platform, and a quarter of the data for the Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and Uganda platform.
“HDX has been a data broker for us,” said Hadley. “It reduced the burden of sourcing and verifying relevant data, transforming it into clean, accessible data we can trust. Using HDX data gives us the assurance we need to share that information with people, knowing their choices and incomes depend on it.”
The data is translated into five local languages and simplified into clear messages, such as “Moderate flooding at [location]”. A simple number-based menu guides users to the information they need at no cost.
Farmers and traders have negotiated better prices, increased profit and avoided exploitation. Users of Sauti’s Kenya platform reported a 17 per cent increase in monthly profit (US$29 a month), enough to cover secondary-school fees, uniforms and supplies. People use the platform to plan household spending and assess food supply. Pastoralists use climate data to plan where to put livestock, to conserve water or seek aid during droughts.
Although HDX was not explicitly designed to deliver data directly to people affected by crises, Sauti shows the reach of a global public good. Together, HDX and Sauti demonstrate what’s possible when data is open and accessible: it informs, it empowers, and it changes lives.