Via AidData's April 2011 Newsletter: AidData and the Climate Change and African Political Stability Program (CCAPS) at the University of Texas are working with Malawi's Ministry of Finance to geo-enable aid activity information for better planning and coordination.

 Recently, several CCAPS research assistants traveled to Malawi for the initial stages of the project, which will geocode all development assistance projects currently tracked in the government's Aid Management Platform (AMP). AMP, a product of Development Gateway, is an online platform that streamlines aid information management, allowing government staff and their donor partners to record, monitor, and report information on aid-funded projects and programs. Malawi's AMP tracks funding from 28 different bilateral and multilateral donors, and as of January 2011 accounted for the country's entire portfolio of ongoing activities – totaling over 450 projects and programs.

CCAPS and AidData research assistants will use the geocoding methodology developed by AidData and Uppsala University, which was also employed in the Mapping for Results initiative and is consistent with the standards developed for the International Aid Transparency Initiative (IATI). In Malawi, the team met with several donors – including USAID, UNDP, DFID, Japan, and Canada – to obtain project documentation with geographic details. Once mapped, Malawi's geocoded aid projects will present the government and its donor partners with a simple visual platform to assess current performance and plan future projects. These geocoded data will empower development actors to better coordinate activities and target aid to areas of greatest need, and thus move towards greater aid effectiveness.