South Africa’s data science training institute, the Explore Data Science Academy (EDSA), will soon offer its range of online data science and data engineering courses in Nigeria.
This offers talented, ambitious, and hard-working young people in that country the chance to be trained for a career that has been labeled “the sexiest in the 21st century.”
EDSA’s CEO, Shaun Dippnall, explains, “We have always cherished the goal of training young data scientists in other African countries and now, after four years of perfecting our training methods at home, we are ready to spread our wings into key African countries.”
EDSA started in 2017 when it offered a full-time, one-year course to 100 young aspiring data science students. This course has been recognised by Amazon Web Services (AWS), which has partnered with EXPLORE to offer the same course. Many of EXPLORE’s graduates are currently working within its consulting services business EXPLORE-AI on international projects including Thames Water UK.
EXPLORE’s success prompted the academy to offer courses online. “By going online, we can reach a far wider audience and we now train thousands of young people every year. The success of our full-time course has been phenomenal and we have a 95% placement rate after graduation with excellent starting salaries. Our courses are designed to be practical and deal with real world problems in business,” says Dippnall.
Nigeria has the largest economy and the biggest population in Africa, with more than 200 million people. About 9% of the population is aged between 15 and 24, which offers EDSA a potential pool of nearly twenty million young people from which to select its students.
Like the rest of the world, Nigeria’s economy contracted during the 2020 Covid pandemic, which was exacerbated by the country’s strong reliance on oil exports.
Dippnall adds, “Nigeria unexpectedly came out of recession in the fourth quarter and we noted that the telecoms sector was singled out as one of the key drivers of growth post-pandemic. All these factors make Nigeria an ideal environment in which to train young data scientists, who will make a significant difference to the efficiency and effectiveness of companies as the world moves deeper into the digital, information age.”
The data science universe is expanding in complexity and EDSA is right up there, offering courses in Data Science, Data Engineering, Data Analytics and Business Intelligence.
Dippnall concludes, “The innovative design of our learning platform and the passion of our scientist facilitators equip EXPLORE learners to do great things. Facilitators are experienced in tackling real-world problems and skilfully mentor learners throughout the programme.”
