DSN Annual Report 2020/2021 : Driving Artificial Intelligence Impact Across Africa

A rapidly growing universal truth today is that all roads lead to data. Data and its application in Artificial Intelligence (AI) can become a sustainable basis for socio-economic development and breakthrough innovations that address the millennium development goals (MDGs). Reflecting on the past year, the extensive activities
and focused intervention of Data Science Nigeria demonstrate how Nigeria is setting itself up for a period of unprecedented growth in harnessing the benefits of intelligent systems to drive incremental local capacity, skill development and socioeconomic development.

Since our inception in December 2016, the Data Scientists Network Foundation has been working to create a range of capacity building initiatives to advance the socio- economic development of Nigeria at both the local and national levels.

We are achieving this by taking a solution-oriented approach to the application of machine learning to solve social and business problems, particularly the MDGs and galvanizing the data science knowledge revolution for sustainable value creation in Nigeria. Our approach is to further the MDG’s goals by understanding the data imperatives and how local insights can accelerate a focused application of data science for the development of Nigeria’s emerging market through job creation, data-centric entrepreneurship and localised innovations.