Mbwana Alliy

Big Data from Silicon Valley to Africa

THE WORLD WE LIVE IN Speaker 1 of 17

Followed by

Mike Mc Dougal

@mbwana

I began “BI“ in Aerospace (2004) •  Proprietary telemetry systems supporting

certification of complex systems. •  Aerospace telemetry market is worth $16B

(2016) without factoring in consumer drone market

Business Intelligence @ Microsoft (2007-2010)

•  Bringing BI to the hands of ordinary “Information Workers”

•  Shift to the cloud away from client-server PC architecture

•  Governance was a real worry esp. after financial crisis and drove BI market

Venture Capital: Moneyball for Startups (2010)

•  The cost of launching startups has dropped dramatically.

•  Emergence of Startup Ecosystems beyond Silicon Valley

•  "little bets"- new category of Global Micro VCs

•  From Airtime lending, financial services..

•  To energy asset leasing…

•  personalized education

Africa (2014): Extending Access

Next Wave of Technology •  AI/Cognitive Computing (e.g. IBM

Watson)

•  Internet of Things (Affordable Smartphones)

•  Query user interfaces (e.g. Siri, Cortana..)

Challenges for Africa •  What is our path to an "open data and access"

culture?

•  Developing "data scientist" discipline and the right mindset

•  Affordable internet access may still be a short/medium term problem

Use Big Data to Solve Real Africa Problems Thank You @mbwana