The World Bank launched its Open Data Initiative in April, 2010. This initiative made an array of data sets, including the World Development Indicators, Africa Development Indicators, and Millennium Development Goal Indicators ? free for all.
The Apps for Development Competition aims to bring together the best ideas from both the software developer and the development practitioner communities to create innovative apps using World Bank data. The Competition challenges participants to develop software applications related to one or more of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Submissions may be any kind of software application, be it for the web, a personal computer, a mobile handheld device, console, SMS, or any software platform broadly available to the public. The only other requirement is that the proposed application use one or more datasets from the World Bank Data Catalog available at data.worldbank.org. The competition ends in 3 months and there are $45k in prizes available. http://appsfordevelopment.challengepost.com/
