Location matters; over 80% of decisions made involve an understanding of location information, ‘where’ activities and developments are taking place. Location is an essential component in the information management of tackling the challenges the world is facing, and is often referred to as the ‘fourth driver of decision-making’ for business and the public sector alongside such metrics as revenue, time and cost. Furthermore, it is now widely accepted that building infrastructure for the gathering, validation, compilation and dissemination of geospatial information is as important to countries as the building of roads and telecommunications networks and the provision of other basic services. Developing national spatial data infrastructures (NSDI) will better facilitate the availability and access to spatial data for governmental organizations, the private sector, universities and citizens in general. Recognizing the importance of high quality geospatial and statistical information, and their effective use in promoting evidence-based socio-economic policies and achieving internationally agreed goals, including the Millennium Development Goals, the overall goal of the project is to strengthen developing countries’ national statistical capacities based on the use of national geospatial data to enhance demographic and socio-economic data. The project will enhance the national geospatial information tools and infrastructure, which in turn will support integration of geospatial information with socio-economic statistical information. This will improve the quality and availability of data to users, especially policy decision makers and researchers, and also meet the increasing demand for high quality information at the national, regional and international levels. The core activities of the project will consist of studies of best practices in building spatial data infrastructure capacities, developing guidelines and training material on best practices, an expert group meeting to review and validate the training material, enabling countries to produce and disseminate geospatial data and information, both on their own websites as well as through the UN Global Geospatial Information Management (GGIM) website and the UN Second Administrative Level Boundaries (SALB) portal. The project will also organize four regional training workshops and several study tours focused on geospatial data production and dissemination, to facilitate the exchange of good practices and share the existing knowledge among countries in developing regions.