Data Science Africa – An Initiative to Bridge the Data Science Skills Gap in Africa

Abstract

This paper describes an initiative to introduce students in African universities to data science in a workshop setting. We describe the experiences of the inaugural workshop on Data Science in Africa held at the Dedan Kimathi University of Technology in Nyeri, Kenya and the follow-up workshop held in Kampala, Uganda. The workshop consists of lecturers on data science methodology and presentations by researchers on real life application of these methodologies. The workshop was motivated by the realization that students were not adequately prepared to deal with challenges resulting from the data explosion in their areas of interest. The work presented here is an approach to fill this data science skills gap that combines classroom learning, hands on laboratories and presentations by researchers in an intensive one week program