About

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 not having all the answers to questions I had. I write to answer some of these questions and also speak about this in conferences and webinars.

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 work.

Direction

I think deeply about communities and believe that the people who live close to the problem should solve them. How?

Locally-driven research and innovation is crucial for developing solutions that effectively address the specific challenges faced by local communities, but the current technical and data gaps in Africa is too huge. I also think about the broader power dynamics of data and technology access, and how we can build real, local ownership.

I am currently pursuing my Masters in Earth Observation and AI to allow me contribute to solving some of these problems. My focus will be in two folds:

• building open source tools that reduce accessibility to using technology and data. Currently working on pySARflow

• contributing to projects and research on making geospatial data (including EO) more useful in the African context. Currently exploring use-cases in Disaster.

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.