News
As WAEC Prepares to Launch its Revolutionary Platform, EduStat
By: Peter Oluka
The prestigious examination body in Africa, the West African Examinations Council (WAEC), is on the verge of an epoch-making event.
With over 40 million tested candidates in the last 71 years of its operations, WAEC in partnership with Sidmach Technologies, an ICT firm that develops and deploys software solutions at scale to solve high-impact business challenges, will this week launch a revolutionary education data platform codenamed EduStat.
Why EduStat?
As WAEC prepares to launch its revolutionary education statistics platform think about this scenario:
Olabisi Adebanjo (fictional name) is a final year student of XYZ University. She plans to conduct a review on students’ Senior Secondary Certificate Examinations (SSCE) performances in the last 10 years. Olabisi’s plan is to use Machine Learning to evaluate students’ performances in a particular school in Oyo State; from the results she can project how the school will perform in the next five SSCE sittings should things remain as they are, presently.
She also plans to make recommendations to students, parents, teachers, the school management, educational body (the government), and ultimately to commercialise her project building an EdTech startup upon passing out from her National Youth Service Corp.
Now, Olabisi is faced with one challenge – arranging the data set to achieve her goal. Where is the data?
This is where Edustat comes in. The platform offers educational analysis, using data visualization and data analysis tools as well as reliable educational assessment data to help users make informed decisions.
WAEC has been generating a lot of data over the years. Imagine 71 years of data backlogs in its vaults. And there are people who seek this data for academic purposes or government projects.
So, working with Sidmach, WAEC built the EduStat portal for real-time generation of educational statistics over the years. And you should be excited because as a user you can filter the data down to specifics!
Who needs EduStat?
Researchers/academics (PhD students, professorship, masters) – It is usually difficult to access accurate data that cover education statistics in gender, disabilities, regions, male/female and other indexes. Researchers will have a cause to smile because EduStat contains more than just statistical numbers; you are assured of infographics. The developers infused a summary of the statistics using Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools.
Therein are Graphs Optimization Guides (GOG) for people who have not used electronics graphs before. This guide tells them what each part of the graph represents; you can pan on the graphics too. You can query the graphics according to dates, or times.
Interestingly, the numbers can be converted in tabular formats – standard deviation of what statistics you are looking for. You can also save your report for personalized use – it can be downloaded as PDF and the graphs can be saved as Image to be used in presentations.
The opportunities are numerous. Governments at all levels – Federal, State, LGA; MDAs, are welcome to use EduStat.
For instance, Kebbi State Government wants to assess the state’s performances in SSCE over the years. They can compare their State with other States for developmental planning, interventions (in case the students are not doing well in certain subjects like English, Mathematics, etc).
A State Government that pays WAEC fees their students would cherish to have the accurate data of their performances. This data is unique to WAEC! You can’t find it at the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). In fact, NBS relies on WAEC to provide them with certain data.
The usage is anonymous-based data. Unlike some institutions that share personal data; the WAEC EduStat is GDPR and NDPR compliant.
Thus, Funding Agencies – The World Bank, UNESCO, DFID, etc., who are looking for reliable data for interventions for scholarships, erect classrooms/ this will help for informed decisions.
Schools are not left out. Schools would want to know how they perform in WAEC; maybe for the bragging rights of 9As or other achievements. This will help them compare with other schools. They can track how their female students are performing; how the students (generally) are doing per subject; juxtapose their performance to others.
So, with AI Predictive Modelling, schools shall be able to predict how students will perform in WAEC.
Parents who moved to new locations, but do not know which School to pick for their kids. Worry not; you can assess schools’ performance in WAEC through EduStat.
Private Corporate/Individuals – Any company that does anything on Education like uLessons, Edusko, – this will help them to build, scale-up their products, contents, or solutions around particular subjects. They can ascertain how candidates are performing, for each subject, in real-time.
You feel like signing up on EduStat, right? Great! WAEC will launch the product this week and you will get to know how to subscribe and even the Wallet system that follows.
Truecaller has announced a corporate rebranding and launch of a brand new app icon that will be instantly recognisable on the Google Play Store and Apple App Store. The taming of the new brand identity aligns with a significant transformation taking place in the digital space. At the heart of this rebranding is Truecaller’s renewed sense of purpose, energy and enthusiasm.
Commenting on the announcement, Alan Mamedi, Co- founder and CEO, Truecaller said, “We are excited to unveil our new brand identity and logo. It signifies our continued commitment to our users and our focus to constantly evolve and improve, every day.”
“Our mission, to protect communication for all, is what guides us to develop new anti-fraud solutions like Search Context and engineer improvements to improve user privacy,” he added.
As part of this refreshed identity, Truecaller users also get a powerful new anti-fraud feature called Search Context, as a part of the Truecaller AI Identity engine.
While looking at the search results for any number, Truecaller users will be instantly notified if the name for the number has been recently changed or is being changed frequently.
The app also classifies this contextual message into three colour categories: blue, for a neutral change, yellow, which indicates a potentially suspicious name change and finally red, indicating multiple and frequent name changes which are highly indicative of fraudulent and scammer activity.
This message will be shown to all Truecaller users on all search results across Android, iPhone and Truecaller web.
Dr Olayemi Cardoso, on Friday, formally assumed duty as the acting Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN).
According to a statement by Isa AbdulMumin, CBN’s Director, Corporate Communications, Cardoso’s resumption in acting capacity is pending his confirmation by the Senate.
“This follows the resignation of Mr. Godwin Emefiele as Governor of the CBN,
“Similarly, the Deputy-Governors-designate have also assumed duty, in acting capacities.
“This is sequel to the formal resignation of Mr Folashodun Shonubi, Mrs Aishah Ahmad, Mr Edward Adamu and Dr Kingsley Obiora as deputy governors.
“Cardoso and his colleagues subscribed to the relevant oaths of office at a brief ceremony held at the Bank’s Head Office in Abuja,” AbdulMumin said.
He said that they had since settled down to the task of administering monetary and financial sector policies of the Federal Government.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that Cardoso was nominated by President Bola Tinubu as CBN governor on Sept. 15.
Tinubu also nominated Emem Usoro, Abdullahi Dattijo, Philip Ikeazor and Bala Bello as deputy governors
Flapmax has selected 12 startups for the second cohort of its FAST Accelerator start-up programme, which was formed in collaboration with Microsoft.
Starting in October, the FAST Accelerator’s cohort of 12 startups will embark on a five-week comprehensive acceleration programme in Silicon Valley, California.
The programme received over 1,200 applications from 35 African countries in Africa. Applicants represented a diverse range of cloud-based products and services that serve businesses across Africa, and which use AI to promote innovation, improve efficiency, and address crucial challenges in their respective fields.
The top performers in the 2023 cohort, and those that will travel to Silicon Valley, are: Zeeh Africa, Sumundi, Cotrust Equity, Trucki, Orange VFX, 10mg Pharma, Wallx, Moosbu, KCG Aquatec Fish Farming, Aibanc, Zendawa Africa, and Greenbii.
The cohort will collaborate closely with Intel and Microsoft on co-innovation projects, as well as receive sales and marketing assistance and go-to-market enablement to increase their audience reach.
Flapmax will also help the start-ups to apply optimised large language models, as well as scale and fine-tune these models on Microsoft Azure and Intel platforms.
Dr. Dave Ojika, founder and CEO, Flapmax, said: “Our goal is to use AI as a catalyst to enable startups and marginalised entrepreneurs to rapidly and sustainably develop their businesses and create new job opportunities.”
“Microsoft believes that African start-ups and SMEs are well-positioned to become a bedrock for the African digital economy, with relevant solutions to local societal and economic challenges,” said Mame-Fatou Gueye, SME programme manager, Microsoft Africa Transformation Office.
“Participation in the FAST Accelerator programme will help these entrepreneurs capture growth opportunities and expand their market reach,” she added.
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