This interview was first published in https://blog.vesicash.com/it-is-quite-expensive-to-gather-and-store-quality-data-in-our-country-ayodeji-adedayo-faniyan-chief-data-analyst-fow-africa/

For the second installment in our series of interviews with experts in different sectors, we had a chat with Ayodeji Adedayo Faniyan, the Chief Data Analyst for FOW Africa. He shared with us his journey into Data Analysis and his view about the evolving state of Fintech. Enjoy the interview below:

Who is Deji and makes him tick?

D: Deji is a Data Analyst, with very good experience in Digital Analytics which majorly involves analyzing digital footprints on Generation Y and Z.

How would you describe what you do?

D: I would say that it is quite engaging and a lot of thinking goes into it. For instance, Twitter Data is different from Instagram Data which is in turn different from web data. What this means is that we have different clients and different issues to solve and report.

What inspired your journey into the world of Data Analysis?

D: I started my career at Red Media where my former boss Tobi kept saying that I needed to understand and interpret web data and what makes website visitors tick. Why do they visit some pages over the other? All these questions got me interested in Digital Analytics.

Would you say that there are any challenges with being a Data Analyst?

D: Many, there are a lot of challenges- Problem Solving is a blanket name for challenges but I will be more specific. Data Collection from different Digital sources is a big problem that I constantly encounter.

Also, collecting Data from Twitter is different from websites and they show different issues so my team and I constantly have to solve these problems.

What tools do you use to get data?

D: We use a wide range of tools from Excel, Power Bi, and Python. My team and I are also done with our in house scrapper to be revealed very soon.

What are the challenges faced with accessing quality data in the country?

D: You have to collect your Data by yourself as only a few government agencies are collecting data. It is quite expensive to collect data and store it without having anybody coming to buy it from you for their usage.

What do you think about Fintech and its current evolving state?

D: It is a great thing that is happening and this is majorly driven by Generation Y and Z

Do you know anything about Escrow payments?

D: Yes, I do. I know that it is important for Dollar transaction and third party agreement also, I think.

Tell us a situation where you’ve needed Escrow or wished you had used Escrow

D: I have needed it a few times when dealing with Nigerians in the diaspora.

What are the current trends in Data Analysis?

D: Data Visualization is the new thing now and everybody wants to build engaging dashboards.

What do you think the future of data analysis would be?

D: That would be hard to say but AI is definitely coming to all industries.

What would you recommend for someone trying to get started with Data Analysis?

D: I would advise that they can get started by taking courses on Data Analysis- there are a lot out there. I also have a series of courses on this niche so they can try them out- you’d get a lot of assignments and virtual internships.