2016 ICT4D Conference

It has been established throughout the world that the digital economy is characterized by unmet demand for trained staff and a large number of aspirants without job skills, and with no opportunities to prosper from that economy. Despite advances in big data analytics, machine learning, search and categorization algorithms; human intelligence is still the best tool for data cleansing, categorization, enrichment, and curation. We know that unrefined, incomplete or insufficient data sets can sometimes be more of a challenge than a benefit where doing data enrichment with our teams acting as the workforce had enabled a global news outlet to enrich over 1.2 million pieces of data from news articles over the course of two years. This has provided a different way for users to navigate through the content and for the creation of reference content to prolong the duration of news content. From customer service tickets, to the agricultural and health impact, to user-generated content, the rural youth and women had been the teams who had not only categorized most data types where they feed this data to your algorithms, or return it to your teams in whatever form needed, ensuring that your search and categorization functions deliver exactly what your users seek. iMerit is here to deliver all these digital services to its clients by training these young men and women on market-aligned skills to effect positive social and economic change.