Data science team from Ghana wins UN Datathon 2023
Data Science Team from Ghana got 1st Place overall and also the prizes for Best Youth Team, Best Visualization and Best Team from Sub-Saharan Africa.
22 January 2024 11:00
Competing against over 400 teams from all over the world, the GSS team got 1st Place overall and also the prize for Best Youth Team, Best Visualization and Best Team from Sub-Saharan Africa. The challenges at the Datathon was to create “an innovative data solution which tackles local sustainable development challenges”. The solution should accelerate progress towards the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals using open source data sets and have a geospatial element.
The Data Science Team produced an interactive tool which provide decision-makers with information about school enrollment, access to electricity and access to information on a local level based on night light data sources and data from the 2021 Population and Housing Census. The Data Science Team of the GSS was formed in 2022 to strengthen the use of Data Science and ICT at the Ghana Statistical Services. During 2022 and 2023, Statistics Denmark has worked closely with the team building skills in R and showcasing how administrative data can be turned into official statistics.
Together with Statistics Denmark the Data Science Team created the Statsbank Ghana forming the base of the Population and Housing Census Atlas.
We have made a small video presenting the Data Science Team and it’s work.
Video on the Data Science Team - 3:30 minutes
Read more about the Datathon and the winners on the official UN Datathon website here.
The Datathon was supported by the UN Committee of Experts on Big Data and Data Science for Official Statistics. You can find the UN-homepage with datathon essentials here.