Before joining AIMS Senegal, Ibrahim Sawadogo (2018-2020, Mastercard Foundation Scholar) from Burkina Faso, obtained a Master’s degree in mathematical statistics from the Pan African University in Kenya.

One of the best students of his cohort, he obtained an internship at the Senegal bureau of Atos, a leading international IT services company with a client base of blue-chip international companies across all industry sectors. At Atos, Ibrahim was in charge of leading a project to build a vocal chatbot (robot) using Automatic Speech Recognition (ASP) that would allow users to pay their taxes through a telephone call. Equally incorporating the “Wolof” local language, the chatbot would allow users who cannot read or write to interact with the robot. One of his supervisors, Dr Abdoulaye Niang, intimated that “Ibrahim’s impact is so positive, making him a huge asset for the company”.

Ibrahim contended: “The Co-operative Education program via its immersion to a company (Atos) helped us to put in practice what we learn while we were at AIMS. Given the integral role AIMS students play in various projects at Atos, it is not surprising that Co-op students remain a large part of the Atos team. The learning curve was steep, and I felt constantly challenged by the project, which encouraged a lot of individual thinking and problem solving”.

After graduating in February 2020, Ibrahim was offered a position as a Data Scientist at Atos.