For students in Nigerian to fit into the emerging fourth industrial revolution (4IR), where technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science and machine learning are being leveraged, the government must partner with the private sector to develop a 21st-century curriculum.
This advice was given by Ayodeji Balogun, co-founder and chief operations officer, Terragon Group at the 2019 Data Science Nigeria (DSN) Summit & Bootcamp held in Lagos.
According to Ayodeji, the government can infuse more advanced topics around data science, machine learning so that students could get access and hands on experience at a very early stage before they get out of school and get trained by their employers.
He also called on the government to provide adequate infrastructure that would enable players in the ecosystem perform their duties optimally.
“The biggest problems we have in Nigeria as far as I’m concerned is access to data and infrastructure. In other countries, the government provides access to some sample data sets that engineers can work with to train their models, you don’t have to think about looking for data sets, here in Nigeria, there’s nothing like that, so we think that government can support a lot in that area,” he said.
He noted that Terragon uses data and technology to simplify the process of connecting brands to the African consumer through intelligent connections at scale on the mobile device. This, according to him is done by relying heavily on data to enable smart connections to mobile for businesses across Africa. “Data science, artificial intelligence and machine learning are the tools of our trade,” he disclosed.