Prof. Bitange Ndemo

Prof. Bitange Ndemo is a former Permanent Secretary of Kenya’s Ministry of Information and
Communication. After his tenure with the Government, Prof. Ndemo now teaches entrepreneurship, and
research methods at the University of Nairobi’s Business School. Most of his research centers on the
link between ICTs and small and medium enterprises in Kenya with an emphasis on how ICTs influence
economic development in Kenya. Prof. Ndemo is credited with facilitating many transformative ICT
projects including East Africa’s first undersea cable, TEAMS, Open Data initiatives Mpesa. He still
plays a key role in building sustainable models of innovation hubs in Kenya. He an advisor to I-Hub, the
premier innovation hub in Africa, UNCDF’s Better than cash alliance, and UN’s Global Pulse and he is
past Chairman of the Alliance for Affordable Internet. He also sits in the Board of Research ICT Africa
that is based in South Africa. Prof. Ndemo holds a PhD in Industrial Economics from the University of
Sheffield in the UK and bachelor’s degree in Finance and Accounting from the University of Minnesota. He
is a Big Data enthusiast and founder member of the World Data Lab.
Keynote: Leveraging Big Data to Achieve Sustainable Development Goals.
This talk will focus on leveraging Big Data to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) adopted
in September 2015. These global agenda has been prioritized by development institutions and other
Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) hoping to grasp the question of how to measure the progress of
these goals. The 17 goals with 169 indicators include not only existing millennium development goals
(MDGs) such as no poverty, zero hunger, good health, but also broader goals pertaining to water, the
environment, industrialization, urbanization, etc. These goals cover a broad range of sustainable
development issues, and it is hoped that governments will use these goals to fight against extreme
poverty and address the challenges of ensuring environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable
development in their respective communities (Choi et al, 2015). Crucial to the success of the SDGs will
be strong government systems and, in particular, strong statistical systems that can measure and
incentivize progress across the goals (SDSN 2016). Increased data analytics by non-state organizations
lie the IBM, offers great promise for countries that have been slow to embrace the data revolution.
Unfortunately, Africa faces the risk of remaining behind this revolution.