African Economic Outlook

AfricanEconomicOutlook.org is the latest evolution of the annual African Economic Outlook (AEO) report, essentially bringing its trusted, high quality content into the digital age. Like the report, AfricanEconomicOutlook.org combines the expertise of the African Development Bank, the OECD Development Centre, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and a network of African think tanks and research centres.

Visit the AEO website

The Brief

OECD approached Liquid Light with a brief to build a contemporary multi-lingual website that would represent the AEO publication online. They wanted to break away from the constraints of a once annual publication and instead use the website to make the publication a living entity, encouraging engagement, by offering a place for a community to discuss current topics through the use of blogs and news stories. Their overall intention was for the website to grow beyond what their publication has been able to achieve by becoming a centre point for information.

The Challenge

The team came across two main challenges on the project. The first being the issue of taking linear content designed for print and making it work well online. The second main challenge was managing the website content since the book was being published at the same time as the website build – receiving the content 2-3 weeks before project launch meant that the CMS had to be efficient enough to enable several content publishers to work at the same time.

The designers were also presented with the challenge of making words look interesting in an online format – they wanted to bring an element of vibrancy and to give the site features that would make it fun to play with.

The Result

The result is a massive success for the AEO, offering it a solid foundation to move forwards! Liquid Light have translated a static once yearly publication into an online information repository, extending its statistical capability, offering more benchmarking over time, the opportunity for regular news dialogues and blogs and a simple translation option feature. The website is intuitive with one of its main features being an interactive map, making it easier and more enjoyable for its users to navigate.

By offering a foundation for the community to cross publish based on their findings, the website offers a foundation for effective development in Africa. Since its launch, the website has been positively received and has set in motion the desire for the OECD to offer more of their publication range online.

On Going

A year on and Liquid Light have worked with AEO once again to keep their annual publication a living entity by including the updates of their second annual publication on their website. This year Liquid Light have implemented a new dynamic SDMX which is a standard for pulling and sharing data between the different government bodies and is intended for the long term efficiency of the conversion.

The need for double entry has been eliminated with the new content management system enabling both data to be added to the website as well as being used for publication in print. In future years it is intended that this new system of centralised management will improve work flow of collaboratively authoring the publication online as well as long term reduction of cost. AEO now have a solid platform that ensures data is dynamic.