So and welcome to the d. W. Debate at the World Economic forum so our viewers watching us from home were coming to you from the most visited city in Africa Cape Town my name is edith q money now according to u. N. Figures by the year 2050 every 2 out of 4 people will be african thats quite staggering when you think about it does that then mean that if the population is going to quadruple here that our dates out will also quadruple and what does that mean for the future of data on the continent this morning were asking the question is data africas new oil and im going to be helped to answer that by my Student Panel and im going to be introducing them now im joined by sylvia my carry on my extreme right shes the head of geospatial technologies on the cofounder of have to analyze 6 base in kenya but also joined by mr alex q who is the managing partner and chairman at 80 kindy if youve been to the World Economic forum a few times you might have seen his face. On my right made me the right as mr moore at sun miss he is the managing director and the head of the center for the 4th Industrial Revolution right here at the World Economic forum host and also doubling up as a panel member thank you and last but not least france cornea is the cofounder and chief executive officer of data profit based in south africa thank you all for joining us. So more let me start with you were asking the question is data africas new oil why that comparison is that even a fair one. I would go a step further and say data is the oxygen. For the. 4th and thats a revolution because if you look at the developments an Artificial Intelligence particularly around 2016 with very little data we have demonstrated that we can crack potentially do some of the most difficult challenges we face today from increasing our grid culture yields reducing Energy Consumption improve improving congestion and maybe accelerate to cure for cancer and data is a source for a lot of these potential developments so in our view in my view there is the oil its probably the oxygen or the 4th Industrial Revolution and theres a huge potential as you say in africa were talking about potential but france your someone whos actually already harnessing the power can you talk to me about what you do what they type of absolutely so a lot of the work that we do at the profit focuses on analyzing manufacturing data which is a really interesting field when you look at the amount of data it created as manufacturing as the sectors and sector that produces the most amount of data which it was in the african context and checked the way or rather what we say is you largely manufacturing hubs across the world. From africa its still there youre also doing something similar at have to analytics and theres an interesting article you wrote about how data is already helping us fight Climate Change in africa correct so at tunnel it takes what we are focusing on we worked with a rundown government and most particularly the Agricultural Ministry in harnessing data in collaboration with said late imageries to ensure that they have the correct information and where particular crops are being planted so for Climate Change that then the data helps. Countries or organization determine when to plant and when not to plant therefore avoiding west saw in that manner you trying to tackle the whole idea of Climate Change and ensuring that you transcend that by using data to make sure you making better decisions are the right time so if on the hierarchy of needs data and the human touch which comes 1st more a for me i think they go together because with data we can really have human centric solutions. Dado is not just coming from people obviously its important but theres a potential as we heard before to harness data from things as well and if you combine things that environmentalists lifestyle data personal data would control or create a data economy that benefits the people of africa and also create the environment for startups and create opportunities for young people to get into new fields alex i want to come to you now because were talking in the context of africa these startups where in one of the biggest hobbs right now but these tech initiatives are often limited to the city or enterprise level how do we make sure that africa as a whole is enjoying the benefits. If you think about the data as a Strategic AssetJust Like Oil and oxygen youve got to create it youve got to collect it and youve got to protect it and get data it is like oil what would you do if someone was taking your Oil Every Day selling it back to you and you could protect it you could protect the pipes and i think thats the issue for africa to unlock the potential is not just finding the right best applications for the future learning from the world having the Public Private partnerships that rackauckas out but also having a sensible data framework what are the rules who owns the who decides who owns the data who prices the data who collects the data where do you stored safely and in a safe environment i think we can come about later i think there are some areas to deep bottleneck for africa that allows more cross border trade clear rules on data authenticating customers and suppliers and transactions and the like so theres a little bit of on this topic i think theres 2 parts of my brain optimism and theres also why theres a lot of things that need to change in order to take advantage of some of these applications ok so let me stay with you youre saying we need a little bit of skepticism when it comes to the issue of data at the moment are we applying that balance correctly i think we need more than skepticism i think a fair amount of paranoia. You know data is a weapon and if you dont think youre on the data now you someone else owns it and if you dont collect and protect that someone already has. Just this past week we talked about google identifying obviously they have a conflict of interest in some senses saying i phone for 2 years had a malware that was spying on you right we have all the sort of global trade issues regarding sort of whos spying on whom in terms of equipment in the technology of the 4th Industrial Revolution. I think baseball just had to pay a 200000000. 00 fine for allowing players bad players to sort of violate child privacy laws so the intrusion. Data data is borderless and some of our laws are within countries and theres 54 countries here and in africa and as as i looked at the figures in 2019 of the 54 countries only 24 had any form of formal data legislation in terms of frameworks for how to how to create collect and protect it and the rest either have draft legislation no legislation or no data so thats its not skepticism its sort of we have to get our act together as a continent in the context of the Free Trade Agreement and the spirit of collaboration to be able to enable this cross border vision intra regional bloc that Everyone Wants to create the jobs and the like all right so i want to come to you because we think that they have actually gone as far as saying that it is the oxygen on the 40 duster of what you said but how do you make something valuable that everyone has access. Thank you so currently as we look at it from there have to analytics perspective is in the african continent and most particularly african governments we have a lot of legacy technologies that do not have the potential to harness the data that is required for them to make valuable and quality decisions so currently we advice anybody who wants to get into that space to to the point where they are going to analyze that data is do you want to have the infrastructure that is going to one is this data so we have to start with the infrastructure that is going to enable you to acquire the kind of data youre going to analyze at the end of the d. Then from that point is then when you decide which kind of insights youre going to draw for you to make the kind of decisions you want to make so more outlets come to you because silver has already touched on some of the challenges in your mind one of the big ones for africa when it comes to collection and management of storage of data and i want to comment on what. And i agree with your paranoia because theres a risk that nations or continents that generated are imported to. Potential good use for their citizens and countries using Artificial Intelligence and deep learning will take off and there is a risk that those countries will have the data but cannot harness it because of lack of technology or dont have the data will be forever left behind so we will see a world where those countries will jump forward and others will have the potential of permanently falling behind so thats an opportunity and a challenge we have so the idea is to really create the infrastructure to generate data and this is where technology is like 5 g. Internet of things come into play but i think it needs to be a National Strategy not left to individual companies because its too big and if it can instrumented fields if it can instrument the oceans we can collect a lot of data and improve our great culture as i mentioned oceans and health and in terms of who owns the data who makes money out of it if you look at some of the Platform Companies their market valuations are bigger than the g. D. P. s of all african countries so theres value in data the question is how do we turned out into value for the owners of the data who gets to decide it so we have a theory it was actually inspired by rely on musician oh wow and his and i have been here yes so we work with people on the panel and he said their outlook any time somebody uses my music i get residual value out of it what can we do it for data ok well come to that idea in just a short 2nd but everyone seems to be talking about infrastructure france do you feel that the South African government is supporting the sector or are you by yourself its its from a Data Infrastructure component its quite interesting especially kind of coming out of an african context in the sense that all of that person is actually we dont have the necessary infrastructure weve got the history infrastructure to move data but not actually process it and so when you look at the big date is. And isnt with their web services its with microsoft none of the senses on africa yet it gradually thats beginning to change and as of the beginning of this year in fact most of has begun to build data centers but even then its very much focused within so theyre not within a broad a context right so how do we contract ourselves in this virtual order from being raw data produces to being lucky to potentially. Its its a its a difficult thing or its the 1st one and i agree with sylvia and his statement good earlier when we actually need to implement the infrastructure that creates a lot of the data and right now were working or. Old infrastructure which isnt producing the data in a manner that is set up for good purposes and then once youve created that almost those pipes thats all thats talk about with the oil and energy you want to create the. Extraction of oil from the ground was in this context the structure of dates and then youve created the demand for the refinery which all of these processing centers. Yeah i was going to i mean there is a real world example thats being rolled out even yesterday by the Regional Business council the World Economic forum which is called the Africa Growth platform so it takes morass point about taking a Global Platform that small and Medium Business and entrepreneurs in africa young and old millennial zen generation 0 are older than that like me can actually enable collaboration get some of the best tools and the like its tight and and the founders of this consortium are very intriguing youve got alibaba then at the bank were very lucky to be a part of it as well dahlberg and a few others that i dont have the names right here but i mean its very exciting and thats something that government Public Private partnerships can build a platform to enable to jobs and also protect and nurture the small and medium sector which i think is the heart beat of any con and b. But especially for africa since we dont have you dont have the the global export economics that east asia had 20 years ago its really got to be africa for africa and this type of platform taking the best of the technologies and the best energies of entrepreneurs like here can make it work as a great example i think its its real time but i mean at the moment those platforms dont exist so the real question where x. Is where. Who has it and what are they doing with it theres not much straight out to moment. Needs to be extracted and collected and its an opportunity and right and i think data and infrastructure should be treated as electricity roads and Health Care Like high priority strategy strategic infrastructure for the government so the potential is there it is locked up theres not much of it and thats the huge upside and theres also the Downside Risk and if we dont do it Small Medium Enterprises wont be able to keep up. Almost jumping in. Our group entirely with the idea that data dont pee right now is locked up its in storage its not it hasnt been built to be used by data versus right its been built for complaints perspective for it how do you mean so its to say the Insurance Industry as a Insurance Company i need to report to some governing body as to my life but its right im going to collect just the set of data that is required to answer that question and im going to store it in that Data Warehouse without any context all of the people that are potentially enrolled on my insurance product rights and thats how ive designed by date infrastructure i havent designed it to law say other enterprises or even within my own into prize to consider how i can use this data to create further value it just looked at it from my reporting perspective and its almost when you look at Data Infrastructure you can see 2 mindsets and really theres an old one which centers on going to risk the states that were going to store it you can always go and reference that its not set up to interact with simply and then theres a shift in mindset towards actually data can continue secret value if you build it in a manner where you can give it the necessary context you can kind of think a little bit wider than just the narrow compliance questions you need to answer so that brings me back to more and this idea that you have having a Central Place where people can trade data. So i cases is that if you treat that as a commodity much like oil and allow for people to share their data or sell their data the question is how do you value the thing because it doesnt have built in value so we said what if we again taken off from what i am spy and we said how do we create value assigned value to data when it doesnt have an Intrinsic Value so we said how do you value coffee or oil or tea or any minerals that theres a system called commodity exchanges so we said what if we trade data but you cannot trade data because of privacy and volume so we said can we create an alternative kind of a reference and here technology is like blocks and come in handy we can create a token exchange so the idea is let me give an example and south africa an african continent has a large gene pool diverse and if you can collect their bodies genetic data i think most of us would volunteer to give it free of charge for curing cancer. And but if somebody wants to build a medicine i want to have my consent asked for and im paid so if you can touch the data and i can say if i can put on my data like music anyone wanting to use it for Cancer Research can use it for ever i dont want any money but for other purposes as for my consent we can actually do that technically so when somebody launches a Cancer Research application im thinking about an abstainer that is certified the data it makes itself available but if its for Drug Discovery i get notified i say you can use it for 6 months and then because my data is traded at an Exchange Using their proxy i get paid the value for that purpose and it goes off and down and they can trace it back to me so i get paid and the finance ministers are happy because they can tax the transaction so it creates a equitable platform and it benefits the owners of the data not just the Platform Companies and it also allows for startups to come in and harness the power of data and that can create a huge wave of innovation and Employment Opportunities for young people i have to say i really like that idea but youre talking about never ridging privacy for data to be used you know in a bigger context right or perhaps even curing cancer but sylvia i have to ask are we prepared for this i mean ive heard it said that if the challenge was small data with privacy then the challenge for big data in safeguarding our freewheel that the Predictive Technology will be so good that i wont even know if my thought i might i dont think we yet radio for that we havent gotten to that level yet the are deep countries that are ready to embrace that but. The general feeling of the population ag