Data Science Nigeria Set To Hold AI, Financial Inclusion Summit And Bootcamp
News reaching the ecosystem divulges that Data Science Nigeria will in a month’s time hold its annual summit and bootcamp focused on the application of Artificial Intelligence in financial inclusion strategy.
The event is expected to specifically focus on understanding the financially excluded segment, utilising alternative data in developing credit risk scoring algorithm. The event will also be held on the backs of building simpler AI-enabled financial delivery interfaces.
The summit, according to Data Science Nigeria, is scheduled to hold on the 10th day of October 2018, at the Oriental Hotel, Victoria Island, Lagos. The theme will be “New Algorithms for the Financially Excluded Segment”.
This is a broad-based stakeholder session focused on understanding the emerging trends, and advanced data analytics uses cases as they are being applied to solve the issues related to financial inclusion. The dignitaries expected to be leading the plenary and discussions are local and international experts such as Adebisi Shonubi, MD/CEO, NIBSS; Yinka David-West, Director, Lagos Business School; Matt Grasser, Director, Inclusive Fintech, Bankable Frontiers Associate, USA; Temitope Akin-Fadeyi and Head Financial Inclusion Secretariat, Central Bank of Nigeria; Ekow Duker.
The one-day summit will be followed by a five-day all-expense-paid residential Artificial Intelligence bootcamp and hackathon on emerging trends in machine learning, between the 10th and 14th of October. The aim is to build world-class capacity in advanced data analytics, up-skill financial inclusion data analysts and researchers in emerging best practices. The event is also being held to support the development of contextually relevant algorithm and tech innovation.
The bootcamp on its part will include face-to-face teaching, virtual online classes, and hands-on hackathon using the Kaggle.com platform. Distinguished data scientists from institutions such as the Google AI Lab, GitHub, Stanford AI Research and Bankable Frontiers Associates, will be facilitating the sessions.
A pan-Nigerian selection competition is ongoing to select the 150 best-performing students, researchers and practitioners that will be accepted into this free bootcamp. The bootcamp will also serve as the final test of the Inter-Campus Machine Learning Contest, which is under the sponsorship of BlueChip Technologies as part of the celebration of its 10-year anniversary. More than 10,000 students from 90 universities and polytechnics have taken part in the preliminary phase.
The summit is being sponsored by big names such as Microsoft, Terragon Group, AXA Mansard, FCMB, InstaDeep AI, ProShare Nigeria, The Guardian, Guardian TV, OneFi, KPMG and Zindi South Africa.
