Leveraging Big Data to Drive Development

Big data, if effectively harnessed, is a catalyst to development, writes Kazeem Tewogbade

The relevance and use of big data – large data sets which are analysed to track trends and patterns in information, and used to determine and reveal outcomes – has steadily grown in recent years. The amount of information that can be collected from big data sets is vast and is critical for improving decision-making. Mostly used by private organisations globally, it helps companies to improve business performance and better understand their target audiences – provide early warning signs, real-time awareness and real-time feedback on issues and required areas of development.

This ability to draw information from millions of different sources is especially beneficial to developing countries with a predominance of rural areas and poor institutional capacity, as it has the potential to better lives by forecasting poverty and shared prosperity through mobile phone data, using satellite imagery to monitor and map electrification of rural areas, to better understand the targets of financial inclusion and climate smart agriculture, to name a few. This activity has been implemented by private organisations in various African countries: in Kenya, a solar energy provider – M-kopa – uses cloud technology to generate data and manage its solar panel devices. They generate more than one million device readings every day which provides information related to the batteries, temperature of the devices, and sensors, as well as geographical data on where the devices are located; they have also been able to use data to calculate their customers’ savings – up to have US$338 million since they started five years ago. Farmerline, based in Ghana, provides local farmers with access to accurate, up-to-date weather forecasts and market prices, thus, they gain immediate knowledge of competitive pricing and often larger and steadier yields. Increasingly, the power of big data is now shifting from being used solely by private enterprises, to being used by governments, especially in public-private partnership initiatives, to identify development gaps; assess areas for improvement; citizens’ identity; and manage/mitigate risk.

Despite these successful use-cases, digital divide and slow adoption and operation of advanced technology in most developing countries have, so far, limited the possibility for the potential and capabilities of big data to be fully harnessed. This is being addressed by international institutions such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation (OEC) and the United Nations Develop- ment Programme (UNDP), which are working to reduce the infrastructure and skill divide in order to effectively facilitate the use of big data in developing countries. An organisation called Big Data 4 Africa is also working in partnership with the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data to close the data gap in Africa, by improving availability and accessibility to data and analytics in sectors such as food security, healthcare, financial services, etc.

In Nigeria, big data is still in the early stages of implementation, even more so in the public sector; in the private sector, it is mainly being used by multinational technology companies and start-up tech companies, such as IBM Innovation, Dell EMC, Terragon Group, etc. A few companies in the FSI sectors are exploring big data too. TLcom Capital recently invested $5M into Terragon Group, a data analysis organisation because of the potential big data analytics has in making an impact on the country. The first Big Data Economy Summit in Nigeria also took place on 12th October 2017 had representatives from Diamond Bank, MTN, Data Science Nigeria and other nationally prominent organisations. Bluechip Technologies also recently released BluePrime, an analytics software that is positioned to revolutionise business-to-consumer relationship management – providing valuable, in-depth insights into customer behaviour, trends, experiences, and sentiments, and through a campaign engine, also provides messaging templates for businesses to tailor their communications to their target customers.

Nigerian telecommunications companies began to make use of Big Data through the SIM registration process; they adapted their BI platforms to integrate data analysis, in order to better understand the customer and use the information more efficiently. However, the method of collection and categorisation then was flawed due to its simplicity, as only one data set –location – is used for analysis, rather than multiple sets. This caused a number of problematic loopholes, as traders and business CEOs end up in the same category because they both make calls to certain locations around the country; therefore, practices to target that demographic would then have varying impacts on the people in the category.

In 2014, Ogun State announced the opening of 300 tertiary control points to boost survey access and conduction across the state in an effort to upgrade and re-equip the Department of Survey in the State Bureau of Lands and Survey. The control points were also going to collect data from tertiary workers’ registrations as well as surveys with the aid of three Continuously Operating Reference Station (CORS) as the data collection medium. This attempt to collect data through survey points appears to be a good idea on the surface, but when implementation began, it proved more difficult. The lack of technological advances caused the project to stall, as the data quantity increased over the years. Also the lack of consolidated and continuous efforts caused the project to lag behind.

In Edo State, the first Nigerian open data portal was launched, which is expected to have a two-fold benefit. Firstly, advocates contend that making government data available to the public in open formats increases government transparency and accountability. Furthermore, open data should enable third parties to leverage the potential of government data through the development of applications and services that address public and private demands. In reality, open data has not fully taken off in Edo State because of the digital divide and the information lag by the government i.e. state government bodies are slow to upload results and the public do not often use the data because of the lack of data analysts at their disposal, which are also costly.

Despite these seemingly false starts, knowledge and recognition of the importance and potential impact is on the rise, with the private sector taking bold steps to making use of effective data collection and management techniques in order to meet their business objectives. The potential for impact across developing nations like Nigeria is clearly boundless, but it can only be attained if it is treated as a matter of priority across both the public and private sectors. The increasing demands from customers and citizens who are mostly mobile and connected, places demand on both private and public sectors. While it has not yet been diversified as extensively for public sector use due to the culture, absence of data privacy laws and the lack of skilled personnel, the continued use by private sector bodies will translate through public-private-partnerships, and eventually, through to government itself, once tangible results are recognised.