The Data Science Africa Visiting Fellowship presented exciting opportunities for members of the DSA community to explore and deepen their academic and professional interests through research visits to DSA partner academic institutions. This fellowship provided individuals with the opportunity to carry out independent research, build professional links, and develop their interests in data science and artificial intelligence research and policy.
Most importantly, participants in the fellowship had a valuable opportunity to establish connections with academic and industry experts, furthering their professional and personal development.
The Fellowship Inaugural Project
Having built a strong foundation of data literacy and created and nurtured a community of African data scientists, DSA began to engage in and initiate programs aimed at strengthening the foundations of the digital economy across Africa through effective data policy.
The first project in the DSA Visiting Fellowship focused on the opportunities and challenges associated with data sharing across the public and private sectors. By identifying lessons from the use of data science in the COVID-19 pandemic response, it developed a blueprint for more effective data-sharing collaborations and created a policy framework to support safe and effective data use.
This project was hosted in collaboration with the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge.
DSA created a database of data-driven COVID-19 solutions in Africa. It aimed to learn about innovative ways people had used data to respond to the COVID-19 disease, lockdowns, curfews, and all other issues brought about by the pandemic. Contributions to this effort were collected through a survey.
The entire DSA community was invited to participate in sharing the form far and wide to build a rich database of these use cases. The collected data was analyzed to extract lessons that informed DSA’s work in supporting policies.
