The 5 Best Websites to Find Data Sets for Malawi
Working as a BI consultant in Malawi, perhaps the biggest challenge that I have faced is secondary data availability and veracity (a fancy word for trustworthiness). This point is driven home if you consider the fact that Malawi does not yet have an official open data portal; an initiative other governments in Africa have already implemented (South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, Morocco)
This article explores the 5 top websites from which you can source free data sets for Malawi. These websites serve different purposes and industries, hence, will only be ranked based on three criteria: content (update frequency & variety), access (available formats, mailing lists, support) and website usability including aesthetics.
1. Reserve Bank of Malawi
The official website for the Malawi central bank presents a great platform for sourcing financial data. It features a variety of raw data sets, reports and indicators including daily-updated foreign exchange rates, bank rates, inflation rates, treasury bill auction data and many other tools and visualization. The section on inflation rates allows you to view and visualize historical data in addition to presenting a downloadable version of the data in Excel format. The platform also scores highly on usability as it presents an intuitive menu and a professionally designed interface. Perhaps one challenge is the rather slow performance, especially where bandwidth is elusive. I reckon this is a result of the real-time analyses and visualization, but lets not speculate. Could be a number of other factors affecting performance. Another challenge is the lack of a mailing list subscription feature. But being a central bank, this could be deliberate. Rank. No. **1
2. Malawi Spatial Data Portal
MASDAP is perhaps the best kept secret when it comes to open data platforms. It serves the GIS audience and is home to a variety of data sets including maps, land cover, buildings, climate, transportation and health. You won't hear about it unless you belong to the elite group of GIS heads. Its merits include a wide variety of GIS data, formats and metadata, data search feature and overall usability. That being said, its falls victim to its own variety and volume goals and performs poorly when accessed under trying bandwidth conditions. Rank. No. **2
3. Malawi Stock Exchange
If you visit the MSE website you would think am a simpleton for ranking it No.3, but don't let the old dot-com-boom look and feel of the website fool you. I admit, the platform has a long way to go in terms of design and usability but it is designed for one purpose and it does it very well. The site scores highly on both content (daily updates, variety) and access. MSE is the only platform that will allow you to subscribe and get email updates for a period of your choice. It also features a live stock price tracker. The major limitation is that most of the data is presented in PDF format, a factor that limits its integration capabilities.
4. National Statistical Office (NSO) Official Website
Operated by the Malawi National Statistics Office (NSO), this one scores highly on aesthetics, save for the top flying flag gif. The website presents a simple, yet elegant interface suitable for a government agency. It also does very well on data variety, which is not surprising considering that this is the home for all data Malawian. However (here it comes), the platform scores poorly on updates and access. The majority of the data is either presented in report form (PDF) or as HTML tables that may require significant web scrapping or copy and paste skills (here is a good article on web scrapping using Python). Updates to the site also take longer than expected of a government agency and it also has a number of broken links (e.g. link to their MASEDA platform). You can also join their mailing list by sending a request to an email address listed on the site, although I think this feature could be better handled via a direct subscribe form. Rank: No.**4
5. Open Data For Africa (Malawi)
The AfDB operated platform ranks last on the list for one major reason. The data is highly outdated! As of this writing, the latest data for Malawi is from 2013. Despite the lack of current data, the platform presents a good option if searching for historical data. It also features numerous rich visualizations that can come in handy when analyzing data and writing reports. I rank it No.**5 for its outdated content.
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