A four-day national summit on big data and analytics for business leaders and data scientists will take place next month in Kampala, Uganda’s capital city.
The summit, a free public service event, tagged ‘African Data Summit —how to discuss the key challenges and opportunities that big data and data sciences to business leaders,’ is organised by the Africa Industrial Business Centre and will hold at Kampala Serena Hotel on 20-24 March.
Africa data summit is a forum with global perspective but Africa focused, this is a premier event for industry experts to discuss the key challenges and opportunities that big data and data sciences.
The summit will feature keynote presentations from chief executive officers from a range of industrial sectors such as financial services, energy, oil and gas and telecommunications. Keynote presentations are also expected from former presidential aspirant Prof. Venansius Baryamureeba, a Ugandan mathematician, computer scientist and academic administrator who now runs the Uganda Technology and Management University.
Announcing details about the upcoming summit at a media breakfast on Thursday, Juliet Lorna Amutoji, the Director Africa Industrial Business Centre said Uganda as a country is lagging behind in capacity building in data management which otherwise would be a critical tool in effective planning by government agencies and ministries.
She said, “We (Uganda) accumulate a lot of data but we don’t know how to use it well to inform our decisions. Progressive countries have managed to develop because they have prioritized data generation and analysis. Uganda’s priorities need to change if it is to realize its development agenda.”
“The government has a lot of information but it is yet to use insightful analysis to push for development just like countries like Israel did. There has to be a centralized system where data is generated, data is kept.”
Mr. Siya Mthethwa who works as the Head of Data Management and Consulting at Stanbic Bank Uganda noted how the markets had shifted with companies coming up with new innovations daily.
He said using big data in digitisation will also help small Ugandan companies get a level playing field n their marketing strategy which was once biased in favour of larger companies. It will bridge the gap and cut down on the cost of doing businesses through using social media to study consumers’ preferences and reach out to thousands of customers and potential customers.
“Look at companies like Jumia Uganda, they are now relying on big data just like much much bigger companies like Uber, Facebook and Amazon to study their customer or user preferences. Let us say you buy some book on Amazon, the next day you log in, there are higher chances they will suggest books for you to purchase,” he said.
“The telecoms for example protection of data is vital and a lot of telecoms are working on legislation to protect that data. Big data is crucial in finding out what happened in the past, what it means now and what it holds for the future,” Mr. Mthethwa emphasized.
He added: “At the summit, we are also holding a high-level panel for executives and another for technical people.
Uganda has a population of 13 million mobile subcribers, with a growing consumption for data and internet services from telecoms.
