In 2019, at the recommendation of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a US-based organisation, Development Gateway, approached REEP to help them develop a series of ‘dashboards’, aimed at providing relevant and up-to-date tobacco-control information for policymakers, health advocates, the media and the public. Development Gateway is a US-based group that aims to “create tools and design processes that help collect, visualise, and use data for a more equitable world”. The result of this collaboration was several country-specific ‘dashboards’, aimed at providing stakeholders with a quick overview of relevant tobacco-related issues in these countries.
The project was funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. We worked closely with Development Gateway and a South African-based consultancy (Firdale Consulting) to develop the content for many of these dashboards. The project created a series of dashboards for six populous African countries: the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Zambia. Stakeholders in the various countries were consulted multiple times in determining the topics that were included in the dashboards. Most countries had dashboards on smoking prevalence, tobacco taxation, the cost of tobacco, industry interference, and illicit trade.
REEP worked closely with the technical team at Development Gateway to develop the content for the various dashboards. Much of this work entailed conducting literature reviews and summaries of published material. However, some primary research was conducted in most countries. In South Africa, the South African E-cigarette Survey (SAES) was conducted with funding from Development Gateway. This survey resulted in a paper on the relationship between cigarette smoking and e-cigarette use, published in 2024.
The first phase of the project came to an end in 2023.