DKT Ethiopia using GIS technology to improve family planning, HIV prevention programs

Apr 29 2013

"In just six years, DKT Ethiopia has transformed its system for tracking contraceptive sales from pins and pencils to computers and satellites and, in the process, helped create a family planning and HIV prevention success story in the Horn of Africa," David Olson, a global development communications consultant, writes in the Huffington Post's "Global Motherhood" blog. Noting DKT Ethiopia is an affiliate of DKT International, Olson describes how a Geographic Information System (GIS) has helped the organization "display and analyze sales, finance and inventory information geographically and, particularly, to plot every one of its 30,000+ direct and indirect sales outlets." He adds, GIS helps DKT in making "a [significant] contribution to Ethiopia's family planning and HIV prevention efforts is by keeping a close watch on its sales performance and tweaking its efforts, where necessary, to maximize performance." Olson notes DKT currently is studying "the efficiency, feasibility, cost-effectiveness and sustainability of equipping its sales team with smart phones to allow them to enter information on new sales outlets directly into the system, eliminating a huge amount of work for headquarters staff" (4/24).