Innovate for Africa Fellowship as I see it

I honestly didn't think I was going to get into the fellowship because of the rigorous application, but I got in anyways. Before I continue, let me tell you a bit about IFA. IFA is organized by Novustack to create innovative youths in tech through personal branding, design thinking, strategic analysis, and hard skills lab. As you can see, its a kind of a big deal for my career as a data analyst.

Right before the fellowship started on the 3rd of January 2022, we were already given a lot of tasks and I knew from there that the innovation readiness training (IRT) wasn't going to be easy. I committed to IRT right from December 2021 by performing the tasks given, I also used December to sharpen my Python skills which I was happy I did.

IRT started and it was more challenging than I thought, mostly because I had to balance it with my day job because bills are waiting. I had to balance between office meetings and tasks with IRT meetings and tasks. I realized I was actually good at multi-tasking.

The hackathon brought out my design thinking and product management skills I didn't think I had. My team worked on a financial product called moneybag. Moneybag is a digital financial platform that offers financial advice to customers, integrates bank accounts, and automates savings and investments. We were able to develop the product to the prototype level and we did a pitch which was amazing.

The personal branding sessions was an eye opener, I realized that the CV is mostly about packaging and how you present your work experience to the recruiting company. I have always known that LinkedIn is very important, it was good to hear it from another person. The part I enjoyed the most was designing a portfolio. I'm not a designer but it came pretty easy to me. I don't want to sound cocky but, I think I can do anything I put my mind to. I might not know how to mix complex colours, use CorelDraw, Adobe or Figma, but my portfolio is pretty good.

The most challenging part of the IRT was the client project. I have always thought I could do everything alone, but working wit other data analysts proved me wrong. In my client project, we needed to help Novustack develop a means to identify a successful candidate right from the application stage based on previous data. We had to do a lot of data cleaning, and visualizations to get insights from the data. At a point during the fellowship, I started doubting my skills as a data analyst but realized that learning is a continuous process. The client was not satisfied with our deliverables in the 2nd and 3rd week which made us think outside the box. I had to learn Microsoft Visio (an application for illustrative diagrams). Like every fairytale, there is an happy ending to the client project. We made the final presentation on the fourth week and the client was impressed with the insights we had. They asked for recommendations and were willing to go through with our inputs.

IFA for me was challenging but also insightful. I realized things about me I didn't know before now. My skills as a data analyst is well sharpened, thanks to the clients' project and hard skills lab. I have also developed some interest in product management which I aim to explore later in my career. I have learnt to work under intense pressure and meet deadlines. I must say, every tech person must try to be part of the IFA community.