Can You Measure The Goodies Of Data Science Nigeria?

by Precious Kolawole

What if Data Science, most time called the sexiest job in the twenty-first century encompasses talents without skills?
What if everybody learned the basics of Data Science without extracting values and motivations that come from community engagements, that creates a drive for talents to aspire and yearn more?

Now imagine what would’ve become of Nigerians Developers without this superlative, top-notch community whose interest, visions, and objectives don’t depend on maximizing profit alone but to raise faculties, strong points, talents, and potentials in Nigeria, exerting them through in-house, and inter-university competitions, pieces of training, internships, and scholarships.

Sure, I can see you’re in haste to know how I’ve been impacted!

I started my tech journey at age 17, very late last year 2019. Guess what made me get started? Just a story from Steven Kolawole, my brother, about how the Data Science Nigeria 2019 Bootcamp went, my intellect, my frame of mind was refined. I felt the bangs. I knew I wanted to be part of the community, not even because of the friendly and generous reception and how much food they consumed, but because of how much I knew it’d be helpful and impacted I’d be in furtherance of my career in Tech.

Although, that would’ve been my first reason, because I’m nicknamed Sweet Tooth as I do crave and have a fondness for sweet and delicious meals.

I became affiliated with the known AI Campus Club OAU where I got to meet with people of similar ideas, tastes, thoughts, and dreams. While following my learning patterns, I didn’t cease to engage in prep competitions hosted by the community. Moreso, I became a Meetup Facilitator of Women In Data Science Ife, where we conducted and facilitated Python and Machine Learning classes of about 30 mentees.

Here comes the Data Science Nigeria 2020 Bootcamp. It started with 60 days of streams of Machine Learning and Deep Learning. My ML skills and knowledge got improved rigorously as I learned the intuitions behind many ML Algorithms up to Deep Learning fundamentals and techniques.

However, the Bootcamp qualification hackathon started. A long 3 weeks of Exploratory Data Analysis, Visualization, beyond-belief Modeling, and aggressive submissions to have a place on the leaderboard. Fortunately, I was among the top 33 on the leaderboard out of 750 Data Scientists that participated in the Bootcamp.

Finally, I ended up being bestowed a first-class award, a recognition of the most outstanding female in the Data Science community who not only strives to be the best but also invested in helping others through knowledge sharing. Ms. Algorithm of the DSN 2020 AI Bootcamp. Never in my wildest dream have I imagined I’d get this award in 2020.

Pertaining to the Obafemi Awolowo University AI community AIPlus OAU I became affiliated with, who also won the Retina-AI University of the Year Award.

With the massive AI aids and resources that were awarded to the community, this implies that the volume of talents that’d be raised with these luxuries in subsequent years is clearly immeasurable.

Here is the Tech community that cherishes skills more than University degrees as I didn’t major in Computer Science. Also, the Data Science community that picked us up from the muddy clay, transformed and brought us to the limelight.