The National Development Planning Commission (NDPC) and the International Centre for Evaluation and Development (ICED) have strengthened their collaboration on the development of the Ghana National Evidence and Gap Map, a digital platform designed to consolidate research and evaluation evidence to support evidence-based policymaking and national development planning.

The discussions, held on Monday, July 13, focused on advancing work on the platform, which is being led by the NDPC with technical support from ICED.

The initiative also involves other institutions, including the Ghana Statistical Service and Parliament's Research Department, to help develop and implement the national evidence repository.

Speaking during the meeting, President and Chief Executive Officer of ICED, Dr David Sarfo Ameyaw, said the platform would bring together evaluations, end-of-project reports and academic research that are currently scattered across various institutions into a single, regularly updated database.

“Now that we have got this framework, the question is: Which areas do we have evidence for?” he said, adding that artificial intelligence tools would help users quickly access and synthesise relevant information for policymaking.

Director-General of the NDPC, Dr Audrey Smock Amoah, proposed aligning the evidence map with the five thematic pillars of Ghana's national development policy framework to facilitate its integration into the country's long-term development agenda.

She noted that the Commission's work on monitoring and evaluation, the Sustainable Development Goals and Voluntary National Reviews would complement the initiative, expressing optimism that the partnership would help institutionalise evidence-based decision-making across government.