Agapiti Manday, Manager of the Data for Local Impact Innovation Challenge (DLIIC), recently visited Kosovo to share successes and innovations from Tanzania. He participated in the launch of #DigDataKosovo, an open data challenge organized by the Millennium Foundation Kosovo (MFK). As the keynote speaker for the challenge launch, Mr. Manday played an important role in motivating Kosovo’s government, entrepreneurs, and data enthusiasts to participate in building an innovation ecosystem.
In addition to sharing about DLI successes in Tanzania, Mr. Manday had a few important messages for the attendees at the Kosovo launch:
- As Kosovo launches an open data innovation challenge, they should realize they are doing something that has been done before in Kosovo. DLI has proved that it is possible to develop successful innovations on open data in Tanzania.
- Data-driven innovations do not always require “high tech” solutions such as artificial intelligence or blockchain. It can involve basic products and tools that solve community pain points and thereby change lives.
- When growing an innovation ecosystem, it is important to create networks between youth, innovators, government, civil society, and the private sector.
See more from Mr. Manday’s #DigDataKosovo presentation:
Click to see more from Mr. Agapiti′s presentation
Commenting after returning from Kosovo, Mr. Manday, said, “It was a great honour and a big recognition for the DLI project. We were selected to participate in the Open Data Challenge because of what we have been contributing to the Tanzanian Innovation Ecosystem.” He added “Our efforts and work whereby we emphasize the use of data to innovate technologies that will have an impact to our communities, has been recognized and that is an achievement to us as DLIIC.”
During his keynote address at the Open Data Challenge launching event, Mr. Manday had the opportunity to showcase some of the data-driven innovative solutions developed by the DLI sub-grantees. “They were excited to see how we have progressed in our innovation ecosystem. After sharing with them some of our sub-grantees innovations, they realized what kind of data-driven innovations they also need to focus to achieve their goals,” he noted.
To learn more about DLI’s sub-grantees’ projects, check out the winner profiles for the 1st Challenge, 2nd Challenge, and 3rd Challenge.
About Millennium Foundation Kosovo (MFK)
Millennium Foundation Kosovo is the implementing entity of the Threshold Program, an agreement between the Government of the Republic of Kosovo and the Millennium Challenge Corporation. The Kosovo Threshold Program addresses two key constraints to Kosovo’s economic growth: an unreliable supply of electricity; and real and perceived weaknesses in rule of law, government accountability and transparency.
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