NAIROBI, Kenya, July,15,2015,RTI International – a leading nonprofit research institute – and IBM’s (NYSE: IBM) Africa research lab have announced a partnership to deploy big data analytics and cognitive technologies to help transform development approaches in Africa and around the world. In one of the first projects, IBM and RTI are developing and testing intelligent systems to capture data about schools in Mombasa County, Kenya.

Through the partnership, RTI and IBM Research – Africa will explore ways of using advanced technologies to capture accurate data about challenges in areas such as healthcare, agriculture, water and education. Drawing on the power of big data analytics, researchers will provide insight to governments, aid agencies and other organizations that are looking to make more informed decisions about investment and development while having greater visibility of results.

“A dearth of data on Africa in the past has led to misunderstandings or misrepresentations of the continent’s history, economic performance and potential. Over the past few decades, even simple facts have been misrepresented – the size of a country, its economic performance, the amount of poor people, the volume of exploitable resources,” said Dr. Kamal Bhattacharya Vice President IBM Research – Africa. “The latest advances in mobile, big data and Internet of Things technologies have the potential to change that so that we have an accurate and dynamic understanding of Africa’s challenges, rising opportunities and incredible potential.”

The partnership comes as a rapid rise in mobile and Internet of Things technologies are producing unprecedented amounts of data. In developing countries, mobile phones, digital devices and low-cost sensors connected to improving cellular networks are reaching previously disconnected communities with the potential to produce new insight about how people live and the challenges they face.

“Rapid advancements in technology and open data initiatives mean more data is available now than ever before, offering significantly greater insights to improve lives through smarter development programs,” said Aaron Williams executive vice president at RTI. “By combining our expertise in data science and development, RTI and IBM will apply the information newly at our fingertips to accelerate improvements in literacy, respond rapidly to the spread of infectious diseases, and discover and apply new innovations for improving the human condition in the developing world.”

Big Data for Education in Mombasa County

In one of the first joint projects, RTI and IBM are developing and testing intelligent systems for data capture and decision support to improve accountability and transparency in more than 100 schools in Mombasa County, Kenya. The project is designed to support the Kenyan Ministry of Education Science and Technology data collection initiative.

Teachers, head teachers, school principals and administrators will be equipped with tablet devices to capture data about students, classrooms, and school resources. IBM and RTI scientists will use big data analytics and cognitive technologies to analyze the data and provide indicators that establish school profiles and progress and provide actionable recommendations about the county’s education system at a granular level. The activity is part of the United States Agency for International Development’s Education Data for Decision Making (EdData II) project.

“In the past, head teachers, government officials and aid agencies across Sub-Saharan Africa have struggled to make informed decisions about how to invest in and improve education,” said Dr. Kommy Weldemariam Research Scientist, IBM Research – Africa. “Often education data is incomplete, inaccurate and sometimes even deliberately misreported.  Using analytics and cognitive technologies, we are creating a school census hub which will minimize the effort, expense and error in collecting valuable data about attendance, performance and resources at schools. It has the potential to completely change our understanding of the situation on the ground and what needs to be done to improve it and improve the outcomes for children.”

Achieving Sustainable Development Goals

Applying insights and actionable evidence from data will be key to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals, ambitious universal targets that will be confirmed by a United Nations Summit in September 2015. They include ending poverty and hunger, ensuring healthy lives and ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education.

“By adding analytical value and insight to data production, curation and integration, RTI and IBM will help lay the paving stones for the ‘data revolution for development’ to lead the way in achieving the sustainable development goals,” said Dr. Luis Crouch Vice President and chief technical officer in RTI’s International Development Group, who has worked with various UN processes on the formation of these goals.

The sustainable development goals raise numerous global challenges for which innovative data science solutions, such as predictive analytics, sifting of massive amounts of evidence, and more agile use of citizen-sourced information and citizen feedback could help provide solutions.

For instance, in the education sector, initiatives can provide insight on building early childhood development programs that predicate success in later education and life; design early grade reading and math programs using the best instructional approaches and curricula; and inform policymakers on policies needed to support sustainable improvements in education and the data systems needed to track progress in systemic reform. In the health sector, initiatives can help track the spread of infectious diseases faster and more efficiently; provide a better understanding of the underlying causes of non-communicable diseases such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer; and improve the knowledge management, oversight and accountability needed to strengthen health systems.

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Thousands of delegates have descended on Addis Ababa to set the new financing architecture for a new global partnership

 ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia– Closing Africa’s infrastructure gap is a top priority in order to put the continent on a path for double digit growth and sustainable development. This is according to world-renowned economics professor, Jeffrey Sachs.

“There is no choice, Africa needs 10 per cent per year of economic growth in the next 15 years,” Professor Sachs said. The only way to achieve this, according to him, was to focus on large-scale investments in trans-national infrastructure projects in power, roads, broadband, and other core regional infrastructure needs.

Professor Sachs spoke yesterday on the side-lines of the Third Financing for Development Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The event themed “Unlocking Public and Private Capital for African Infrastructure” was organised by the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) Agency and Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).

Thousands of delegates have descended on Addis Ababa to set the new financing architecture for a new global partnership. Its outcomes will also address the issue of means of implementation, referring to the ‘how’ the goals set out in the post-2015 development agenda can be achieved.

For Africa to realise the 2030 timeframe, Professor Sachs, Director of the SDSN and Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on the Millennium Development Goals, urged the global community to rally around the NEPAD agenda, as the continent’s strategy for implementing cross-border infrastructure projects.  “We need to help support NEPAD achieve its goals”, he said.

The NEPAD Agency has identified Africa’s most important infrastructure needs within the context of the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA), which provides the framework to implement 51 priority programmes and projects in the sectors of energy, transport, broadband and trans boundary water.

Chief Executive Officer of the NEPAD Agency, Dr Ibrahim Mayaki, highlighted that Africa’s challenge was not a lack of resources, but a lack of bankable projects. “We need to invest in the capacity to invest”. It is about proposing structured projects, he said.  The CEO mentioned the complementary instruments that have been developed to build the necessary capacity for early-stage project preparation and the Africa50 Fund to finance the implementation of PIDA and other regional infrastructure projects.  Dr Mayaki also underscored the important role of Regional Economic Communities in providing the enabling environment for project implementation, through harmonised policies and regulatory frameworks.

Speaking on the issue of how to crowd in investment, Professor Sachs encouraged African economies to forge partnerships with East Asia, tap into capital markets and strengthen continental bodies such as the NEPAD Agency and African Development Bank.

On his part, Nobel laureate in economics and University Professor at Columbia University noted that financial markets have “failed to translate pools of savings into productive investment”. There was need to better match these large-scale resources with financing priorities of developing countries. “The world has the resources with which to do this. Allocating more of these resources to inclusive development would be good for the global economy,” he said.

The best way for Africa to achieve its infrastructure goals was to tap into a Global Infrastructure Investment Platform (GIIP), Professor Stiglitz said. The objective of GIIP was to put forward an ambitious proposal that would allow long-term investors to ramp up their infrastructure asset holdings, with an allocation target of up to 10% of assets under management over a 15 year horizon.

The event brought together leading representatives from the private and public sector, as well as global think tanks.

The NEPAD Agency, SDSN, UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and Washington-based think tank Brookings Institution, agreed to set up a working group that will move Africa’s regional infrastructure financing agenda forward.

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