2025 and the Data Lab - What keeps us moving?

Dear colleagues and friends,

As we look toward 2025, we are filled with enthusiasm and determination to continue our mission of leveraging data and technology for positive social change. The past year has been a remarkable journey for the GIZ Data Lab - and we are no less excited about the coming one.

Hence, we wanted to take this outlook to 2025 as an opportunity to pause for an instant - reflecting on the progress of our efforts in the last year and give an outlook to the exciting projects that keep our inboxes and to-do-lists filled to the brim!

Data Feminism
In 2025, we are planning to develop FempowerBot, an AI-powered conversational tool designed to educate and train users in effective communication on feminist development. The bot will take on the roles of different personas, enhancing users' ability to engage in evidence-based discussions and advocacy for feminist principles.

DPPD (Data-Powered Positive Deviance)
Building on the experiences of our many Data-Powered Positive Deviance pilots, we have successfully launched our self-paced DPPD – course on the learning platform atingi. Make sure to join for free to learn about possibilities, challenges and examples to find positive outliers in development questions in big data sets and explore their solutions. The DPPD initiative had its fifth anniversary. Time for the Data Lab team in 2025 to thoroughly analyze what we can improve, which part of the methodology might serve as a stand – alone tool and where it might have the biggest impact. We will conduct expert interviews and research – if you would like to contribute – reach out!

NegotiateAI
At the 5th negotiation session, we were on site in Busan to introduce NegotiateAI - an app designed to facilitate the UN negotiations on a legally binding agreement to end plastic pollution. We gathered valuable feedback from delegates and participants and gained valuable insights into the negotiation process. For 2025, we plan to integrate these insights and further develop the tool so that the app can better support the next round of negotiations.

Computer Vision E-Waste Ghana
We are supporting the development of a prototype for the automated identification of different types of e-waste to track material flows on scrap yards in Ghana. The experiment is thought to aid local scrap yard workers and municipalities to improve their processes and data foundry.

This project fills us with excitement and joy, as we are keen to tread new paths by exploring how to leverage AI-assisted image recognition technologies for the SDGs.

Unveiling Vulnerabilities in Climate Policy
We were honored to present our app “Climate Policy Vulnerability Analysis" at the UN World Data Forum in Colombia. The open-source NLP tool is designed to identify references to marginalized demographic groups in climate policy documents. Developed in collaboration with GIZ Data Lab, GIZ Data Service Center, NDC II Assist Programme, and CRAWN Trust, the app can support policy advisors with a sound tool to check documents for inclusive climate adaptation strategies. For 2025, we aim to continue our work towards more equitable climate policy analysis.

Events
“AI for All” explored African and Arab Feminist Perspectives on Artificial Intelligence, asking how GIZ can help to make AI work for all. Our GenAI Talk series continued, as we teamed up with the GIZ Strategic Foresight Team to invite Frederike Kaltheuner of the AI Now institute to explore the currents of global AI governance in light of the Trump administration and EU AI act. We were also happy to have journalist Eva Wolfangel give us an introduction into Deep Fakes, their impact on our work and existing approaches on how to deal with them.

The takeaways from these events still inform our day-to-day operations at the lab. We look forward to host further events, as spurring further conversation on the use of data-driven technologies for the SDGs continues to be part of our mission.

With the new year the Data Lab celebrates a new addition to our team. We are excited to welcome Anna Lisa Wirth, who combines a background in international development with extensive experience in data science and machine learning.

Vanessa Hochwald, Teresa Kroesen and Robin Nowok continue to be the eager innovators at the core of the lab, led by Catherine Vogel who still holds the lab together and tirelessly orchestrates our ideas.

Aranxa Marquez Ampudia ought to be mentioned for her excellent coding contributions as a working student as well as our laborious and versatile “Heads of Support” Lucas Braun, Luis Enco Mantilla and Tobias Kunde, who aided our operations us over the past year as interns.

Finally, we thank all our incredible partners and collaborators for the massive success that was 2024. Your ideas and willingness to tread new paths with us is the pulse of our work. Here’s to a bold, data-powered 2025 bursting with creativity, connection, and impact – despite everything !- now more than ever.

Your Data Lab,

Catherine, Robin, Teresa, Vanessa, Lucas and Aranxa

(P.s. We want to lighten your mood with this stop-motion video attached below. It was created by our youngest team member ever, Jonathan, as part of a delightfully vitalizing student hospitation at the beginning of the year. Enjoy!)