Data Science Nigeria opens 1st Artificial Intelligence Hub in the University of Lagos

Data Science Nigeria (DSN) will unveil the phase 1 of its Data Science Community Centre and Artificial Intelligence Hub for cross-industry and academic research, on the campus of the University of Lagos.

The Hub was officially  launched on Friday, the 8th of June, by 11 a.m. on the university campus with the Vice Chancellor, Professor Oluwatoyin Temitayo Ogundipe and Dr. Uyi Stewart, Director, Global Development Strategy, Data & Analytics, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, USA, in attendance.

This is in furtherance of DSN’s drive for accelerated applications of artificial intelligence to solve social and business problems through a strategic partnership between the academic community, industry, and local and international technology hubs similar to the highly successful Stanford University-Silicon Valley model.

DSN is committed to supporting Nigerian students and encouraging them to turn their academic researchs into innovative start-ups or social enterprises aligned with millennial developmental goals. DSN has a particular interest in solving local problems in the fields of health, education, agriculture and financial inclusion.

The Hub will be the community centre for data science enthusiasts and experts to fraternize, learn, share ideas and participate in local and international projects. DSN also plans to use the Hub for face-to-face masterclasses, industry meet-ups, and dial-in conferences with its over 100+ mentors from across the globe. Data science practitioners can also participate in many industry data projects as interns, freelancers or experts at the Hub.

The Hub features modern data collection tools including biometric readers, an AWS AI DeepLens Camera, Google Clips, Intel Movidius Neural Stick, GPS tracking devices, Bionic Nature Observing Device, Internet-of-Things suite and many others.

The Hub’s unveiling ceremony will also include the announcement of its highly successful learning bootcamp/hackathon, titled, Deep Learning Nigeria, to be held October 10-15, 2018. This will be a fully residential, all-expense-paid learning camp focused on deepening financial inclusion through the use of machine/deep learning for credit risk scoring, identity image/voice authentication, ATM point-of-presence location optimization using geospatial data, and biometrics/voice analytics.

This will be complemented with a first-of-its-kind Inter-Campus Machine Learning Competition to recruit the best 75 students for a Data Science bootcamp, with opportunity to win 1 million Nigerian naira through participation in Kaggle competitions and bootcamp quizzes.

Data Science Nigeria is the vision of Bayo Adekanmbi, Chief Transformation Officer, MTN, a hands-on data scientist and a doctoral researcher who uses data science algorithms to understand low-income customers. DSN has organised free bootcamps, industry summits, online free courses and provide internship/direct job placements for the Nigerian data science community.

DSN has built the largest network of data science mentors worldwide through its through its #MentorAfricanDataScientists programme, through which Nigerian students are mentored by international data scientists. In its eighteen months of operation, DSN has incubated four data science concepts which are being tested for real world applications.

Data Science Nigeria, a non-profit foundation, is driven by its vision to accelerate Nigeria’s development through a solution-oriented application of machine learning to solve social/business problems and galvanize data science knowledge revolution, which can position Nigeria to become the outsourcing hub for international Data Science/Advanced Analytics/Big Data projects, with opportunity to access at least 1% share of the global big data and analytics market, valued at $150b in 2017 ($203b in 2020).