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10 | PMA2014 ETHIOPIA DETAILED INDICATOR REPORT
Preface by the PMA2014/
Ethiopia Principal
Investigators
Solomon Shiferaw, MD, Principal Investigator
Assefa Seme, MD, Co-Principal Investigator
PMA2020/Ethiopia, School of Public Health, Addis Ababa University
Mobile technology is growing in developing countries, including Ethiopia. The rapid advancement
in technology and the falling prices of devices make the mobile phone an appropriate and adaptable
tool to bridge the digital divide in low-income settings. Mobile phones have been used for a
variety of reasons, including facilitation of emergency medical responses, point-of-care support,
health promotion and data collection.
Open Data Kit supports
multiple languages, which
allows data collection in the
three commonly used survey
languages in Ethiopia
PMA2020 uses mobile phones equipped with
Open Data Kit, an open-source application to
collect data on family planning indicators from
households and facilities in all of Ethiopia’s nine
regions and two administrative city councils. Key
features of PMA2020 include real-time data collection
that facilitates timely dissemination and decision making by the concerned parties and built-in
mechanisms to improve data quality, including collection of geographic coordinates of households
and service delivery points. Further, the application supports multiple languages, which allows data
collection in the three commonly used survey languages in Ethiopia (Amharic, Afan Oromo and
Tigrigna) and conversion of dates to the Ethiopian calendar.