Hiedberg @ the Ghana National Data Strategy Workshop

Our team at Hiedberg had the opportunity to attend the Ghana National Data Strategy Workshop. The Ministry of Communication and Digitalisation and Smart Africa hosted this event. This dynamic two-day workshop brought together diverse professionals from government officials to data experts to align on Ghana’s National Data Strategy.

Ghana sits on a wealth of data, and there’s ample opportunity to use this data to better serve its citizens. We are excited to not only partake in these conversations but also play a hands-on role in shaping and implementing parts of this new strategy across the country.

Although we were inspired to action by several discussion topics, our key takeaways are as follows:

1. There needs to be further alignment in the regulatory framework to ensure data protection.

We need better compliance and regulatory frameworks to ensure data security. To build capacity and use cases for all collaborative data mining and decision-making, data owners need protection. Below are a few examples of how the government can create enforceable regulations to support organizations as they find ways to utilize their data.

• Create a universal standard for reporting incidents.
• Publish a universal way of classifying data so that we can compare apples to apples.
• Increase transparent standardization on how we treat, utilize, and regulate data across industries and sectors.

2. We need to bridge the skills gap.

Ghana is on the cutting edge for data in Africa. However, for Ghana to compete, its nationals need to be equipped with the knowledge and skillset to mine and interpret data. With the public sector’s help and advocacy, we need to create training opportunities in data for all interested citizens. These opportunities should not just be offered in Accra to people working in tech. Data is location and profession-agnostic. Proper education in data and its importance will help elevate all communities.

3. At a fundamental level, we need sustainable data infrastructure.

Most of our conversations circle what we can do with data:

• Creating a credit rating for financial institutions.
• Using data to inform traffic light signaling and decrease traffic in congested areas.
• Using data to inform how we proactively treat patients in healthcare.

However, none of these initiatives can be accomplished without sustainable data centers and data infrastructure to make this happen. We need to ensure that our data foundation is solid enough to operate at the scale these data strategies require. We also need to ensure we are building environmentally friendly data infrastructures that do not add to excessive greenhouse gas emissions or water usage for cooling. Alternatively, we can utilize virtual data centers in the cloud instead of physical ones.

There’s a lot to be done and plenty of opportunities to plug in not only in Ghana but in the rest of the continent. Hiedberg is excited to partner with other African data champions to execute and implement data strategies.