Orange's big data competition for scientific community

FRANCE: After the success of the last challenge in 2013, using the technical data of the mobile network of Orange in Ivory Coast, the next Data for Development (D4D) Challenge will use data sets from Senegal. It will reward the best research projects aimed at promoting development and improving the well-being of people in Senegal.

The main goal of the challenge, which is aligned with Sonatel and Orange's development policy, is to contribute to the development and well-being of the local population.

Five priority areas have been defined, and needs in each area have been expressed with the help of the relevant Ministries and partner institutions. The five priorities are healthcare, agriculture, transportation and infrastructure, energy and producing national statistics.

The challenge also aims to contribute towards achieving a 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.