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Omowonuola Akintola

A believer in the 'Technology 4 Good Ethos. Open - n- ess.
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Hi, my name is Omowonuola [uh-mon-woh-nu-oh-lah] but you can call me Ola (uh-la or HOLA)!!

I am passionate about technology, mapping, and innovation and their power to transform lives across the globe. I love openess and believe democratizing knowledge and technology is the only way to level the playing field. This love is borne out of my experience working in open data.

I have spent most of my career using open geospatial data and technology to make communities visible and enable data-driven development. My work focuses on improving data availability across Africa to support local decision-making mostly for (1) electrification planning and (2) in humanitarian sector - where I currently worked.

Direction

I am currently exploring AI and EO and pursuing my Masters in Earth Observation and AI to allow me contribute to problems I am curious about. I want to spend the next few years sort of tinkering around with AI and see what problems it can help to solve in the open data and tech space.

I spoke about what first led me into AI in this webinar recap

Thinking about market

I have also been thinking forward about commercial geospatial markets in Africa. Once communities have the knowledge and skills to solve their problems, how do they sustain this?. I have written four articles this year on my blog trying to explore these questions and what it might take to build a real market.

Yes, there are technical and data gaps in Africa, but almost every training program, project, or “opportunity” seems to assume that once people are skilled, a market will automatically exist to take these solutions forward. So I’ve been looking deeper into what actually needs to happen for things to be different.

Volunteer community work

My community work involves bridging the digital divide to ensure that local talents have resources they need to contribute meaningfully through organizing conferences, podcasting, and designing education programs. My most recent contribution here is designing The Women Learn Program WLP to equip women from developing countries with relevant technology skills that allows them to contribute to projects within their community. I hope to also contribute to policy research to ensure that there are proper policy that supports the adoption of geospatial technology in Africa.

In my free time, I like to disturb the people I love and take pictures of the world.