Summit held to promote data science in Africa
Wave-2 Analytics, a marketing consulting firm has organised a three-day summit in Accra to discuss the future of data science and its importance to socio-economic development.
The summit with sponsorship from Microsoft and Google, was attended by data science professionals, students, researchers, and business leaders from Ghana, South Africa, Senegal, Cameroon, Nigeria and Togo.
Mr Delali Agbenyegah, a Co-Founder of Wave-2 Analytics said data science was a smart way of leveraging data to make informed decisions and the summit was to build capacity around data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.
He said data science had helped many developed countries to improve their health status in terms of early diagnosis of diseases, growth in customer experience, and analysis of customer behaviour.
He emphasised that data science was also helping governments to operationalise and become more efficient in detecting and fighting corruption, terrorism, and fraud.
Mr Agbenyegah urged data science professionals and governments on the continent to create awareness on the importance of data science, build the capacity of their citizens on data science and improve on the syllabus of their educational institutions by introducing practical ICT teaching to allow students to have hands on training.
Ms Winifred Kotin, the Director of Superfluid Labs in her keynote address said if the country decided to be data driven, data scientists could be employed to help solve problems of both public and private institutions.
She emphasized that if the country had able to transition to a level of using data to drive economic growth, it would make great impacts at small levels.
“Enhancing outputs in terms of manufacturing, Agriculture, mining, oil and gas, we can do a lot of growth using optimisation and predicting what is likely to happen in the manufacturing process. An example is BMW, which uses a lot of data driven robotics internet for their outputs,” she said.
Ms Kotin said a decision to establish a business took a long process, therefore, access to capital, enabling environment, housing need, and access to market needed to be improved.
Source: GNA