Technology experts say Nigeria’s success is dependent on datapreneurs, whose job it is to mine, process and interpret data and use them to solve economic and social problems.
According to the experts, the country needs to develop a crop of young people who are capable of marrying data and science together, with the capacity to deploy them to the critical sectors of the economy.
“In Kenya farmers wait for butterflies to come in order to detect rains. But sometimes butterflies come but there won’t be any rain,” said Uyi Stewart, a US-based Nigerian leading data scientist and IBM chief data scientist, at an unveiling of ‘Data Science Nigeria’ in Lagos recently.
“Nigeria should not toe this path. In agriculture a datapreneur can simply gather data from many places and make predictions for diseases and you can make acreage forecast using satellite remote sensing,” Uyi said.
He challenged young Nigerians to convert heaps of files that have been left to gather dust into functional data.
“When you look at files and envelopes we have everywhere, you will find that they are data. Consider the Land Use Act. I have been to Abuja and they gave it to me in a paper form because there is no soft copy. This is an opportunity,” he said.
He said Nigeria has a unique opportunity right now to tap data for growth, adding that Nigeria is at the tipping point with two choices open to her: investing in infrastructure or invest in data which is technology that will bring about transformational change through killer applications.
Also speaking, Bayo Adekanmbi, a C-Level executive with MTN Nigeria, who is the convener, said India is already tapping into the data science space, urging Nigeria to leverage it for growth.
“I believe Nigeria can become Africa’s data science outsourcing destination with our brilliant undergraduates, graduates and young analysts with degrees in engineering/sciences and other numerate subjects,” Adekanmbi said.
According to him, data and data science will become the oil of the 21st century and Nigeria must join the league of countries that will be positioned for comparative advantage in this space.
