The Power of Data: Global Malaria Governance and the Senegalese Data Retention Strike

Global health institutions and interventions are dependent on the production of local health data in the Global South for evaluating and justifying their projects. The crucial labor of producing these local health data is often rendered invisible by the neutral use of metrics by global health projects. However, the 2010–13 Senegalese health worker data retention strike made clear the importance of this labor, as it made explicit the implicit reciprocal trade relationship of data for funding in vertical global health fights. Appealing both to national and global representation, and astutely discerning the importance of the data they produce on a local level, striking health union members in Senegal highlighted the ways that surveillance and regulation are necessary for their government’s participation in a global market through global health funding.