These initiatives include a citizen engagement and analytics system in Sierra Leone that enables communities affected by Ebola to communicate their issues and concerns directly to the government; a donation of IBM connections technology in Nigeria to reinforce government’s preparedness for future disease outbreaks; and a global platform for sharing Ebola-related data, a top official of the IT company has said.
The efforts, according to Dr. Uyi Stewart, Chief Scientist, IBM Research – Africa, combine expertise from IBM’s global network of research labs with the company’s years of experience in humanitarian disaster response by applying mobile technology, data analytics and cloud computing to help governments and relief agencies as they seek to contain the deadly disease.
The work benefits from contributions from a number of partners including Nigeria’s federal and Lagos State authorities, Sierra Leone’s Open Government Initiative, Cambridge University’s Africa’s Voices project, Airtel and Kenya’s Echo Mobile, Dr Stewart said in a statement yesterday.
