Newsletter Q2 2025 – Focus on Training
Welcome Back!
Welcome to the second edition of the UN Regional Hub for Big Data and Data Science for Africa’s Newsletter. This publication is designed to keep you informed about the latest developments, insights, and opportunities to support modernising official statistics through the use of big data and data science.
In this edition, we focus on the many training and learning opportunities available to you. From reading our Blog Posts, attending our monthly webinars, joining our Data Science Champions Network, undertaking online big data courses, mapping out your learning pathway, to seeking mentoring opportunities – there is a variety of learning available to you and we are here to support you on your journey. If you need more information about anything mentioned in this edition, please email us at regionalhubforafrica@un.org.
Join our Data Science Champions Network for Africa
The Regional Hub invites you to join our new Data Science Champions network, where we aim to create a community that inspires and supports you and your NSO on your data science journeys. The first meeting will take place on 13 May, 12:00 – 14:00 (EAT), with a focus on the uses of AI within National Statistics Offices. For more information on what the network offers and the Terms of Reference please see here. If you would like to apply to become a Data Science Champion or Data Science Practitioner, please email us at regionalhubforafrica@un.org.
Where to Find Big Data & Data Science Online Training
There are different training opportunities available to you if you are looking for courses to support your Continuous Professional Development (CPD) in big data and data science. For full details, please visit our Training page.
The UN Learning Management System holds free self-paced e-learning Big Data courses, developed by various UN Task Teams and other partners. It also hosts the online self-paced International Data Masterclass, designed to help non-analytical senior leaders put data at the heart of their decision making.
The UN SIAP Learning Management System holds various facilitated e-learning and self-paced e-learning big data / data science courses.
The UN Big Data Training Catalogue is a searchable database of known global big data / data science training courses (not all are free). You can create your own learning pathway and search the training directory for courses that support building your knowledge and skills gaps.
The International Data Science Accelerator Mentoring Programme 
is managed and facilitated by the UK’s Data Science Campus at the Office for National Statistics. This is a short-term (16 weeks) mentoring programme of a small data science project where international mentees are matched to international mentors via an application process.
The next cohort will be announced around the end of June, so why not start thinking about a small data science project that you could submit via this programme?
Topic Specific Learning
Another great way to learn is to look back at some of our previous webinars where the presenters also shared public GitHub repos and code, for example:
Automated Occupation Classification Coding
An R Package for Better Civil Registration & Vital Statistics
Up-coming Webinars
Our next webinar is due to run on Tue 29 April, 11:00 – 12:00 EAT with presenters from UN Women, UNFPA and the National Institute of Statistics Rwanda, showcasing a new Data Linkage Toolkit. Details of all up-coming webinars can be found here.
Blog Posts
We are delighted to bring you a new Blog Posts section on our website, where we will be sharing exciting write-ups of big data and data science projects that are taking place at African NSOs. Our first Blog post is shared here, and looks at the approach and methods for applying machine learning to Google Trends data for nowcasting GDP in Nigeria. If you would like to submit a Blog Post to feature on our website, please email us at regionalhubforafrica@un.org.
Contact us!
If you would like to share your data science news with us, become a member of the Data Science Champions Network, or discuss anything related to data science with us, please get in touch.
regionalhubforafrica@un.org
https://ecastats.uneca.org/regionalhub/