Unlocking the Data Potential in MENA
In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, the “data baseline” is extremely low. Universities and higher educational institutions have very few Data analytics and AI programs, and those that exist are limited to computer science or related disciplines. They can also be characterized as older generations of data mining and statistics with very limited development or projects in AI. Data science uptake in humanities and developmental domains are almost non-existent at universities or the community at large. Policy and decision makers largely lack knowledge and insights about data and AI issues such as privacy, open data, responsible use of data and AI, security, ... etc. Above all, the basic educational system is severely underperforming in science and math, providing a very limited pipeline of students ready for the data revolution.
Birzeit University’s Center for Continuing Education (CCE) is currently engaged in a project with the aim of catalyzing the creation of a data empowered ecosystem in MENA - with support from the International Development Research Center of Canada (IDRC). In order to have an impact, CCE had to adopt a creative approach relevant to the local context and the limited resources and this approach proved to be successful.
Considering the almost non-existing data landscape in Palestine, CCE was faced with a major challenge: “where to start”? There was very limited expertise and human capacity, very few educators that understand data in the 4th Industrial Revolution context or with applied and practical experience. There are hardly any data companies or startups and datasets are either locked up or not accessible - even data that is supposed to be open. Data providers that have large amounts of data either do not recognize the value of this data and its business or developmental potentials, or do not have the technical skills to capitalize on this data… and there are practically no data policies – let alone open data policies and regulations.
It was clear that the starting point had to be through a capacity development approach that would build a critical mass of data professionals with relevant skills and knowledge to understand and work with data, create data products and services, create show-cases, and eventually create and influence data and AI policies (open and non-open). To achieve this, CCE created a program titled: “Applied Learning Journey in Data for Development” whose outputs include: i) capacity development in data for people with computer science backgrounds and for professionals from a range of humanities, business and sciences backgrounds, ii) creating data startups and/or ii) creating data for development projects. The approach was to line up feasible data project ideas that are based on real-life problems/opportunities and assigning them to groups of professionals and researchers (in their capacity as trainees and developers) to implement as the final outcome of their learning journey. This was carried out in partnership with private sector leaders, businesses and practitioners from different sectors. The data expert team from CCE worked with specialists from the various disciplines (health, business, human rights, finance, education, agriculture, etc.) on idea generation for potential data projects that have a high potential for becoming data startups. Those projects were assigned to the trainees to implement and partners from various disciplines provided high level support and mentorship to the project teams as they developed their products to ensure the fit between the data product being developed and the needs of the sector/organization. It is important to note that the ideation process and engagement of the partners became an important component in capacity development and education for the various sector leaders and data owners. This process also uncovered certain policy and regulatory gaps (ex. data governance) as various logistics were discussed.
The learning journey structure created a unique environment to provide the support to learn, experiment, play with data, and test models, then move into an accelerator and eventually an incubator (through the Center’s business incubator - the B-Hub). Participants acquired technical skills through the learning journey and were guided into developing the data products step by step. This demanded of them to self-learn and scaffold the acquired knowledge and skills through the projects. Technical mentors and support from practitioners specialized in the field of their product (e.g. finance, health and tourism) supported the trainees to build the product, and business mentors from the B-Hub provided them with support in taking promising data products to the market. This process created and is creating a pool of data professionals with show-cases that are being used in the digital and data literacy programs, awareness raising campaign, and policy dialogue and advocacy. It is important to note that issues pertaining to responsible data that cover governance and gender were constantly emphasized throughout that data development life-cycle.
The following is a brief list of data projects and startup ideas that have been implemented by two cohorts of the project in 2020-2021. Most of these projects are still work in progress. Startup ideas are receiving support from the business incubator at the University, the B-Hub.
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Project Name |
Data Project or Data Startup Description |
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The project was initiated by discussions with the Government around financial inclusion, especially for women and marginalized persons. Credit fraud was identified as a major element in supporting innovators and entrepreneurs to develop products and services and minimizing the risk for developing alternative financial services that maximize inclusion. The project also highlighted regulatory and policy issues and initiated discussions with the regulators around the topic. |
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Palestine is a major tourist destination, yet travel information (inbound and outbound) is limited for Palestinian travel agents (as Palestinians have no access to borders and much of the inbound travel comes through Israel) placing them at a serious disadvantage. This project was designed to develop an application for collecting and building big data that would facilitate the work of travel agents to carry out predictions and provide optimal travel options. |
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Another action research that aimed at increasing financial inclusion and reducing the cost of financial services to the end users is a startup that was created by the project called: Smart Financial Technologies by providing a Customer Lifetime Value Based Pricing model that is specific to customer data based on the local Palestinian and MENA context and user behavior. |
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The aim of this startup was to create a system to help people find reliable answers backed up by research for diagnostic measures that would be available for them as patients, and for medical teams who may wish to obtain the latest medical developments in specific fields. The big data aim was to create localize data sets on health issues, diseases that are specific to the Palestinian population. Today, open data sets are available for other societies (e.g. Canadian, American, European, etc.) that do not have the same health or medical profiles. Such big data would be created through this project. The absence of open medical data specific to the Palestinian or Arab population – even though such data does exist, is being used to stimulate a policy dialogue with the Ministry of Health around open medical data. |
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Funding for startups is a serious issue that Palestinian entrepreneurs face, especially considering the volatile and risky context in which we live. This startup idea is about providing a data application linking Palestinian startups (especially those living in marginalized areas, women or members of marginalized communities) to startup funding (mostly from Palestinians abroad). Again, the idea of this project is to provide exposure and access to all entrepreneurs or startups to potential funding, and not only those within the mainstream system. |
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A leading Human Rights NGO with access to large amounts of structured data in multiple unconnected databases and reports in text formats will be deploying natural language processing and various data analysis tools that would link information from the existing databases and other sources to create dashboard for reporting and information dissemination – making the data widely available and in a timely manner and creating insights and predictions on possible intervention areas ahead of time. |
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The MENA region is riddled with Human Rights Violations, yet reporting on these violations is either under reported, not reported or prohibited. This data application is designed to collect data on human rights violations either through data scraping and/or through crowdsourcing. It will deploy natural language processing and AI algorithms to sort them out and verify their possible accuracy, and then provide a dashboard/ reporting tool to report on the various violations. |
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The current socio-economic and political situation in Palestine is causing severe economic hardships and many families and people, especially in marginalized and remote communities are forced to sell their land or use it as collateral for micro farming projects. The issue of land valuation is a serious challenge facing land owners – especially in the marginalized communities, and land is often purchased by business people below their fair value. This application is designed to provide everyone a fair valuation of property in any area. As Palestinians, there are numerous obscure factors that affect the price of a property, including factors such as the likelihood of the land being stolen by occupation forces, and the likelihood of obtaining a farming permit (that is entirely a function of the policy of an occupier and could benefit greatly from an AI system analyzing previous trends, etc.). |
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Information disorder is a serious problem that has been magnified several orders of magnitude with the data explosion and social media. The startup team is developing an application pertaining to the identification of fake news in Arabic. Fake news pertaining to COVID-19 is being used to train the system and develop the application. The project is focusing on Arabic natural language processing and building AI algorithms. |
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The use of pesticides is highly unregulated and overused in Palestine. The difficult farming conditions (small and restricted farming areas, water restrictions by Israel, limitations on movement, etc.) force farmers to take all possible measures to minimize the risk of crop failure. One of these steps is “preemptive” over use of pesticides. This is not only hazardous to human health, but has very serious consequences on biodiversity as it kills all insects whether harmful or not. This project is developing an application that would use imaging to identify the health of potatoes and an early detection system on possible diseases and the optimum treatment that may be required – hence not only impacting health and biodiversity, but also reducing costs of expensive pesticides to the farmers. The development of such an application by an all local team is being used to raise awareness about the value and impact of such applications among the local farming community. |
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Telecoms are the backbone of the internet and data exchange. In this project, a team of entrepreneurs working at local telecommunications company are building a startup that would develop applications to be used by telecommunications operators to analyze disruption alarms occurring across the network of a telecommunications operators, and to provide immediate analysis of the problem, the magnitude of the different problems and predictions on potential faults based on certain events taking place over the network. The team is training their system based on existing data from a local telecommunications company. |
