08 November 2019
Vodafone stated that big data deployment can be used to make life-saving decisions, owing to an era that has become all but dependent on technology
The chief executive officer (CEO) of Vodafone Ghana, Patricia Obo-Nai, said the utilisation of accurate and timely big data could help save the lives of many in the west African country.
According to a company statement, using data from mobile networks is very critical as it is now a global concept.
It said big data deployment can be used to make life-saving decisions, owing to an era that has become all but dependent on technology.
The statement added that with such focus, the company is going to partner with other organisations to pioneer the use of anonymised customer data to “track trends in population movements”.
Collected data will then be “analysed for purposes of decision-making for the health, agriculture and transportation sectors, among others”.
The current group of organisations spearheading the project will include Vodafone Ghana, the Vodafone Group Foundation, the Ghana Statistical Service, and Flowminder, which is a not-for-profit organisation.
The Ghanaian telecom firm sees the partnership as one that is going to encourage the country to use valuable metrics for better analyses and predictions for the betterment of all.
Vodafone is convinced that the initiative will help Ghana measure the Sustainable Development Goal indicators in a better way.
The statement also highlighted what Obo-Nai, said at the “Data for Now” forum at the 74th UN General Assembly in New York, when she was on a panel with Mats Granyrd, CEO of GSMA and Claire Melamed, CEO of Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data.
“The urgent need for accurate and timely data explains why Vodafone is currently leading the drive to use big data for social good in Ghana,” Obo-Nai said.
“For the first time in the history of the country, a telecoms company is partnering government to use aggregated anonymised data to analyse population movements and other trends, and help to make life saving decisions during emergency response, health delivery, agriculture, transportation and many other metrics.”
The Data for Now forum was hosted by stakeholders, which included the World Bank Group and the Ghanaian government.
