OREANDA-NEWS. In his inaugural speech after taking office on September 1, 2015, African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina laid out the five priority areas that the Bank will focus on to advance Africa’s transformative agenda over the next 10 years. These areas are to Light up and power Africa, Feed Africa, Integrate Africa, Industrialize Africa, and Improve the quality of life for the people of Africa. These five areas, which are in line with the Bank’s Ten Year Strategy, have been termed the “High-Fives,” serving as a blueprint for African countries to embark on a course of sustainable transformation.

Against the backdrop of this ten-year transformative agenda, the Bank’s Statistics Department has developed several innovative tools, as part of its Africa Information Highway (AIH) initiative, which will enable the Bank to monitor and disseminate information/data on the performance of African countries in the High Fives priority areas. One such tool is the High-Fives application, which can be accessed on the Bank’s AIH Open Data Platform. The application is specifically focused on tracking progress of individual African countries in these five priority areas, thereby creating opportunities for any necessary and timely corrective action. Through the High-Fives application, users can access a wide range of priority-area development data compiled from multiple international and national official sources. They will also be able to perform visual data comparison across time and countries.

“What makes the application unique is its ability to provide the Bank with the facility to easily track comparative progress for different indicators coming under the High-Fives at national and sub-regional levels from their mobile devices,” said Charles Lufumpa, Director of the Bank’s Statistics Department. “Furthermore, the application will assist Senior Management and decision-makers to more effectively target assistance and resources where they are most needed and to easily monitor implementation progress.”

Data are presented in a choice of formats, including ranking tables, charts and maps, giving a wealth of options for analysis, depending on the user’s specific areas of interest. When multiple countries are selected, the performance of these indicators can be compared to each other. In addition, users are able to export table and chart outputs to Microsoft Excel, Word, CSV, or PowerPoint formats. Users can also drill down to get more detailed information on any indicator and country.