My Experience with eHealth Africa: A memoir of my journey

The first time I ever heard of GIS (Geographic Information Systems) was in my last year of secondary school during WASSCE (West African Secondary School Certificate Examination) preparation, this was between 2012-2013. As a young girl who did not know how to use (and had never used) a computer back then, it felt like an impossible field to venture into. So, I did not develop any?iota of interest in it.

In my third year at university as a student of the Department of Geography,? GIS was a required course. Although I had started using a computer by then to do my assignments and other schoolwork, it was still difficult for me to understand the concept behind the technology of GIS. In the bid not to fail the course, I went in search of a beginner-friendly textbook via the internet to groom my knowledge in this field. Fortunately for me, I found a textbook titled “The GIS Primer: An Introduction to Geographic Information Systems” by David J. Buckley, which did not just help me get an A in the course but got me interested in the technology.

By the end of that academic session (December 2016), as part of the mandatory SIWES for my BSc program, I enrolled in a paid GIS training program at GISKonsult Ltd, Ibadan.? This was the beginning of a hands-on journey into the geospatial industry. when. It was? 3 months of training that gave me a good foundation of how to use ArcGIS to create and manage spatial data in shapefiles & geodatabases; as well as perform basic to intermediate spatial analysis such as georeferencing, digitizing, geoprocessing tools (buffer, clip, merge, union, etc), selection by attributes & location, choropleth mapping, land use/land cover analysis, and network analysis.?All of which are useful in solving problems in the social development space.

While all of that was happening, the tech revolution was gaining ground in Nigeria. As a result, I was spurred to build a career in the "tech part" of geography. Hence, I enrolled for a master's degree in GIS at the University of Ibadan where I honed my research & teaching skills and was introduced to computer programming with Python. For a significant part of my time (at least 5 hours weekly) as a master's student, I volunteered to co-teach undergraduates and tutored colleagues in GIS and remote sensing classes. My Msc. dissertation,?"Assessing the relationship between Surface Urban Heat Island and Indices of Tasselled Cap Transformation in Ondo state" was a great learning curve for me as I got my hands deep into raster analysis in form of sourcing for earth observation data (a.k.a. satellite images), image pre-processing (geometric and radiometric calibrations), gap-filling, mosaicking, generation of land surface temperature, computation of vegetation indices, bulk map production, literature review, and report writing.

Also, during my MSc program, I spent roughly 15 hours weekly volunteering at a Geospatial consultancy organization, Eagle's Orbit Geospatial Solutions. There, I was exposed to opportunities that helped me gain mastery of the skills I had. My major responsibilities involved that I assisted in supervising 5 trainees and industrial training students, facilitated training sessions, design a training curriculum for Industrial training students. I also executed a mapping project, and supported administrative duties.

Somewhere in the middle of all these, I took on several freelance projects not limited to mapping the incidence rate of COVID-19 in Nigeria; mapping COVID-19 vulnerable residents of Ibadan metropolis, mapping buildings in Kogi state to support off-grid electrification, developing spatial reports of unmapped locations in Nigeria. I also produced a topographic map of the University of Ibadan, several location maps for an academic report, a topographic map to support the site selection of an industrial park, and assessed?buildings vulnerable to flooding in Eti-Osa local government area in Lagos state.

At this point, you may be wondering why I provided such an introduction to an article titled "My experience with eHealth Africa". Well, it was to provide you with the context of how I got to where I am. I applied to be a part of the 2022 cohort of eHealth Africa's internship on the 6th of May, which I think was the deadline. To be honest, I least expected to be selected because I was already losing interest and tired of searching for a job that aligned with my career. I had already started a business, Esteri Zobo & More, that was unrelated to GIS or research work.

Getting selected for the internship role was a dream come true for me. From my findings, eHealth Africa is one of the few places in Nigeria where you get a paid GIS internship role. Little did I know that I was going to be exposed to international projects that were even beyond GIS. It was when I got in that I realized I was going to be working with the GIS and Data Analytics team. When I was shown my work plan, it became clear that it was going to be another great learning curve with the relevant resources made available.

It was during this time I realized how God used all my past experiences to? prepare me for that position. The first project I got to work on was the Geolocated Health Facility Data (GHFD) initiative by the World Health Organisation. Out of the 5 countries that the company was contracted to work on, 2 were assigned to me. I was able to develop a comprehensive report that described and assessed the state of Seychelles and Chad's health facility dataset. This project exposed me to skills such as sourcing for private and public data from HOTOSM, WHO, and OCHA-HDX; data cleaning with spreadsheets, data consolidation and harmonization, exploratory data analysis, data quality assessment with spreadsheets and QGIS, designing workflows with Lucid charts, extracting and communicating insights, making recommendations based on the insights. I also learned how to collaborate with senior colleagues as they provided guidance and support throughout the process.

Another project I actively supported was the assessment of digital tools in the Nigerian malaria landscape sponsored by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. During this project, I got the opportunity to use standardized models and frameworks to conduct structured technical evaluations, desk reviews, and key informant interviews; develop training manuals for field data collectors; design data analysis plans; design and deploy survey forms with KoboToolbox; for qualitative and quantitative analysis.

I also had the time to take online courses on my internship work plan. In total, I took eight certified training and four training without a certificate. The training covered hard skills of data analytics and GIS such as needs assessment, defining the scope of an identified problem, data collection/sourcing,?feature extraction, data cleaning, data visualization, automated map production, and spatial data science; with tools such as Google Sheet, Excel, Tableau, SQL, BigQuery, Kaggle, GRID3, QGIS, and ArcGIS Pro.

Also, in the six months of the internship, I was privileged to face situations that taught me time management, emotional intelligence, conflict resolution, troubleshooting, problem-solving, teamwork, and effective communication. It was indeed a transformational experience for me. As the internship ended, I felt more equipped for the future. My next plan is to complete the Professional Google Data Analytics Program I started, solidify my programming skills, especially Python, and master the ETL process. At the same time, I look forward to taking on job roles that align with my career trajectory. Based on my experience, I believe I am a strong fit for GIS or Information management, research, data analytics, monitoring, and evaluation job roles based in Abuja, Nigeria, or fully remote anywhere. I am open to vacancies that suit my skills, please do not hesitate to share this within your network. If you’re interested in this field, I would like to pay it forward by providing one-on-one GIS coaching/tutoring, you can reach me via [email protected] or send me a message on Linkedin. Thank you for reading, I hope you learnt a thing or two. Until next time!