GODAN supports the proactive sharing of open data to make information about agriculture and nutrition available, accessible and usable to deal with the urgent challenge of ensuring world food security.  It is a rapidly growing group, currently with over 317 partners from national governments, non-governmental, international and private sector organisations that have committed to a joint Statement of Purpose.

The initiative focuses on building high-level support  among governments, policymakers, international organizations and business.  GODAN promotes collaboration to harness the growing volume of data generated by new technologies to solve long-standing problems and to benefit farmers and the health of consumers. We encourage collaboration and cooperation between stakeholders in the sector.

When did this initiative launch?

At the 2012 G-8 Summit, G-8 leaders committed to the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the next phase of a shared commitment to achieving global food security. 

As part of this commitment, they agreed to “share relevant agricultural data available from G-8 countries with African partners and convene an international conference on Open Data for Agriculture, to develop options for the establishment of a global platform to make reliable agricultural and related information available to African farmers, researchers and policymakers, taking into account existing agricultural data systems.”

In April 2013, the commitment to convene an international conference on Open Data for Agriculture was fulfilled when the G8 International Conference on Open Data for Agriculture took place.

This conference worked to ‘obtain commitment and action from nations and relevant stakeholders to promote policies and invest in projects that open access to publicly funded global agriculturally relevant data streams, making such data readily accessible to users in Africa and world-wide, and ultimately supporting a sustainable increase in food security in developed and developing countries.

The GODAN initiative was a by-product of this conference and was announced at the Open Government Partnership Conference in October 2013.