Can Africa take advantage of the big data deluge to fix its development problems?

 

While some analysts argue that Africa is best positioned to harness information for development, others say the capabilities of Big Data are overrated, and Africa’s problems do not require massive amounts of data to solve. TEA Graphic 

By Christine Mungai The EastAfrican

In Summary

• The world is experiencing a data deluge. The volume, variety, and velocity of generation are astonishing — the amount of available digital data was estimated at 4 zettabytes (4 trillion gigabytes; or 4 with 21 zeros), and it is doubling every two years. The digital universe will reach 40 zettabytes (40 trillion gigabytes) by 2020, a 50-fold growth from the beginning of 2010.

In 2011, the global scientific community was abuzz with the biggest news in years, an achievement that had the potential to bring science fiction to life in a way not seen up till then.

It was about an intelligent machine that understood the complexities of human language and learnt from mistakes, getting progressively better at giving solutions with practice.

In a world where the words “smart” and “intelligent” have become so overused that they have practically lost meaning — simply connecting to the Internet bestows the prefix “smart” upon a mobile phone — this was a real revolution, a tantalising prospect for the advancement of science and of humanity.

The machine was Watson, a room-sized supercomputer invented by IBM, which had managed to beat two of the world’s best players in Jeopardy! a televised trivia competition in the US that requires players to not only have a repertoire of information at their fingertips, but also figure out the question.

Questions are asked indirectly, for example, instead of asking “Who wrote Hamlet?” a typical Jeopardy! question would be framed thus: “This Globe Theatre playwright penned a tragedy about an indecisive Dane.” The answer, of course, is Shakespeare.

“Up till Watson, computers were not capable of understanding the nuances, complexities and subtleties of human language,” says Rob High, IBM Fellow, Vice-President and Chief Technology Officer of Watson.

“Humans are naturals at indirect speech, but machines are very literal — without the right keywords, for example, it’s nearly impossible to find the information you need when using a search engine. Watson is different; the machine is able to understand what you are really asking, even if it is not framed directly.”

In essence, Watson is able to interpret veiled questions, assess the sources needed to answer a question, be knowledgeable across a wide range of subjects, and deliver the answer fast, in less than five seconds.

In the three years since that first well-publicised win, IBM has been working to transform Watson from a gimmicky game-show winning machine to a commercially viable system that can be used to solve any number of complex problems that not only require massive troves of information, but the ability to find relevant connections in implicit and roundabout communication, as it often as it occurs in real life and as just naturally as humans would — but faster and more reliably than conventional computer systems.

This is the era of cognitive computing, in which systems and software are not programmed, but actually improve by learning so they can discover answers to questions and uncover insights by analysing colossal amounts of Big Data: Call logs, mobile banking transactions, online user-generated content such as blog posts and tweets, online searches, satellite images, and many other large socioeconomic datasets.

Last week, IBM showcased Watson’s capabilities for the African context at a colloquium, whose theme was “Africa in the New Era of Computing,” at Nairobi’s Catholic University.

READ: IBM starts Watson supercomputer roll out in Africa

The company is positioning itself to capture Africa’s virgin Big Data market. Christened Project Lucy, IBM’s $100 million, 10-year project looks to build a cognitive hub in Kenya for Africa and roll out Big Data analytics large-scale to governments, industries, financial markets, schools, hospitals, and any institution that relies on data for decision-making.

In the 21st century, that is practically everywhere.

“With the ability to learn from emerging patterns and discover new correlations, Watson’s cognitive capabilities hold enormous potential in Africa, helping it to achieve in the next two decades what today’s developed markets have achieved over two centuries,” said Kamal Bhattacharya, the Africa Director of IBM Research.