 the age of data literacy, why we should close the data literacy gap. In today's digital world, data is an essential resource for economic growth, competitiveness, innovation, job creation and societal progress. It is used in every sector and promises to improve government services, delivery, complement official statistics and facilitate development in sectors such as education, health, urban development, transportation and humanitarian relief services. Why there is a significant need for data analysis in different fields and industries, the lack of skilled human capital has been a serious hindrance to Africans' ability to use data science and analytics for the purpose of development, business and governance. To close this data literacy gap within the continent, governments should be proactive in building a data native generation by introducing data costs to our elementary schools. A society with sufficient level of data fluency equips the citizen with the skills to understand and contextualize data and thus become less venerable to propaganda, conspiracy theories and fake news. Also, organizations should democratize data throughout the organization's hierarchy from the executive to the frontline employee. The more empowered employees are to read, write, analyze and argue with data, the more they will be able to help make faster and better decisions. Data in the hands of field data experts can be powerful, but data at the fingertips of many is what is truly transformational. Data is critical, it's really important because our life is driven by data. And I think in Nigeria particularly, there is really no sufficient data to back up things. Even the number of people living in Nigeria, we don't even have an accurate data. And I believe that we should start the whole data literacy from even the very, very early stage in schools where we are trying to get people, because proper decisions, we make proper decisions, better decisions with accurate data, whether you are working in a company, whether it's a government parcel or a government parcel, whatever it is, even in our personal lives, data reviews patterns that enables us to make the right decisions. So again, I think I really, really agree with bridging that data literacy gap starting from that very, very early stage and then we begin to build that consciousness in young people and we can begin to make better informed decisions that will create a better future for us. So I think it's really important. You deal with a lot of data, I want to share your ideas. How do you get interested in working with data? So I like what you, in fact, I think I'd like to just stop it. Let's start from there. Data is the new oil, right? That's the saying now. You realize that every business that has grown grew because they understood patterns. You understood human patterns. As well as their business patterns. And those patterns could only be established by historical data. So the essence of having conversations, especially from the elementary level, is to sort of sensitize us because, like he said, we are sort of data bankrupt and we don't even like to even talk about data. Maybe because we don't like to talk about data, but whatever reason, we just don't like to talk about data. But then you realize that the world doesn't change. History always repeats itself. And that means that in order for you to predict what will happen tomorrow, no matter the cycle of life, no matter what changes, I mean, today we're talking about metaverse. Regardless of whatever technology we have, we don't even like to talk about data. Regardless of whatever technology heads, the human race is still the same. Behavioral patterns will still always be the same. It means that you can actually predict what can happen. Just like Bill Gates was able to predict the pandemic even before it happened. So it just shows that, as a result of the fact that he had access to historical data, so that knowledge of data needs to be inculcated from an early stage. Let our children understand what data is. Let our secondary school mates understand what data is. And the interesting thing now is that there's a career in data science, right? Data analytics. That pays a lot. I stumbled on an ad on YouTube yesterday and the ad says you can end up to three million naira while working in Nigeria just by being a data analyst. And you can be working for a foreign company rather. So it just shows you that there's so much opportunity. A lot of people are going into that space. We can as well start now by developing our younger generation so that we can better prepare ourselves. And the reason why we actually don't even have proper data, Nigerian Bureau of Statistics and the likes, I mean they could do us to them, they are doing as much as they can do. But you find out that we don't have skilled hands that properly understand data. So you need to be able to start developing them now because we will need them much more in the future. You are supported. When you mentioned that three million naira for the data job, so no one is mine. The thing is coming from this perspective of education because why we went to primary school, we did average, that's what the total is. We didn't even understand but we never understood the importance of the relevant awarding. I'm sure that was what Niger did not envisage this. They went to secondary school, we tried to do statistics. Main median mood in junior secondary school and then senior secondary school. But no, that was main median mood in junior secondary school. Then in senior secondary school in mathematics, we studied the main median mood and pie charts. Standard vision, variance. When you mentioned big gates, 100 years ago, when I flew the train from that analysis they said every 100 years, 100 years ago that was a pandemic. So finding trend analysis and those things will give you behavioural pattern of an individual or a group of specimen or an organisation. The nation cannot survive without data. If you are working, trying to develop the country with whatever aspect that you don't have data, you are working behind it and you can't deceive yourself. You can't lie. It's not that you want to manipulate things, you know the way some people in government try to manipulate things or give up or corruption, whatever reasons need to be done, that bridge corruption, financial scans and all those things, financial scanners, you cannot cheat data. So we should number one, we should align, realign our education to the current realities of the world. What is evolving, our educational system should evolve. She let to allow young people within with my work in government because I'm going to say this, a lot of us, many young persons, don't think about the government, if you have nothing to offer, what am I doing there? Sometimes you shouldn't copy that bit of savings. I want to serve our government to correct things and the government should create a little environment for this. If you go to countries like the US, somebody will be in the private sector and do very well. After doing very well in private sector, you would like to go back to the government sector, public sector to serve. It's not there because of the money, you just want to better things. So let's try as much as possible to evolve our education especially in data analytics. I think when you said about the whole main media mode, average numbers, none of that, we just thought we were just being smart. Again, I mean, if you ask me, the YGX, I don't know how that how you also like it here. I don't know how that really, so someone says many jokes that find X and Y. I mean, I'm not an accountant or I'm not working in a bank. Money, get account. So I think we need to start linking we need to now revamp our curriculum so that we're now showing young people how you can use the knowledge of data or main media mode so to speak, to solve real life problems, to solve real life issues. Even at that very, like Wood said, at that very secondary school, kids using the knowledge of mathematics, data to solve because at the end of the day, why are we going to school, why are we learning data so that we can be able to predict and apply it it has that application that will not so we learned a bunch of things in school and we're so brilliant, came out tops but you cannot apply that in real life so how do you seek the knowledge of XYZ to apply that to solve governmental issues. Let's say the government is troubled with maybe issues of policy issues leadership issues, how can you use data to say oh by data and some blue chip companies are beginning to use data to solve government problems and it's really important that we begin to relate or I'm more concerned about relatability, how do we take all those learnings and apply it so that at very tender ages young people can be solving problems and when they get and like Wood said that future is secured when they can learn how to use that knowledge to solve real life problems I think I think point to note to our current minister of education if they are working on curriculum especially from the cradle try to use a real life example for these kids to understand things I have been opportunity to read this particular book I saw I just put one book on how you can teach physics to kids and they were talking about real life problems how they can relate it to stories and the rest even solving this issue of pandemic the viruses grew the YDS, the risk of change and all that stuff and then the simple media you talk about, the stock exchange how it moves, how the stock moves it's repeating pattern so what those things are you want to say something actually I think Gemini used the mathematics to reduce the cost of COVID test by splitting the number of times that they are going to test by two so if you ask the same people you test eight, if this eight if not they have the virus then there is no need to test individual put them aside and then focus on that eight to have it more like binary so it drastically reduced the cost so those are real life applications and there is supposed to be a bridge between industries and academics so even outside data in different sectors there should be a link between industry and academics so till we build that bridge then there will be no real life application to what what you are doing so up next is roots stay tuned