Orange has launched its second Data for Development (D4D) Challenge to reward the best research projects aimed at promoting development and improving the well-being of people in Senegal.
According to the firm, the challenge aims at contributing to the development and well-being of the local population and will focus on the on healthcare, agriculture, transportation and infrastructure, energy and producing national statistics with the help of the relevant Ministries and partner institutions. The five priorities are
The challenge also aims to contribute towards achieving a more technical goal by rewarding the best work on improving algorithms for anonymisation, data mining, and data visualisation and cross-matching.
The organisers want to get local and regional theoretical and applied researchers involved in order to guarantee results in terms of education and economic development, particularly for the business ecosystem and local start-ups.
Teams can enter the competition until the of end of December 2014, and in April 2015 a jury of representatives from 13 partner institutions* will vote on the best projects. Ten prizes will be awarded in two categories:
development and improvements to the well-being of the Senegalese people
methods for promoting scientific or creative work
The competitors will be supplied with a set of technical data from Orange Senegal’s mobile network, and a set of “synthetic data” based on a very detailed model of the network which simulates the activity of fictional customers whose behaviour is statistically similar to that of the real population. For more information on the challenge, go to: http://www.d4d.orange.com.
The challenge illustrates Orange’s open innovation strategy and its corporate social responsibility policy, which focuses on using digital technology to promote development and progress for everyone, individuals, regions and communities alike.