Why this matters
Data jobs in Ghana come with many titles: data entry clerk, M&E assistant, research assistant, reporting officer, business intelligence analyst. They all share one core skill. Someone brings you a messy pile of records and a worried question, and you return a clear, honest answer they can act on. That skill starts long before any code.
Start with the question
Most requests arrive vague. A shop owner in Tamale says "sales are bad". An NGO manager in Bolgatanga says "we need to know if the project is working". You cannot analyse "bad" or "working". Your first job is to turn the request into a question data can answer.
A good analysis question is:
- Specific: which product, which place, which months.
- Measurable: you can count or calculate something to answer it.
- Useful: the answer would change what someone does.
So "sales are bad" becomes "Which three products sold fewer units in March than in January, and by how much?" Now you know which records you need and what the answer will look like.
To get there, ask the person a few plain questions. What decision are you trying to make? What would you do differently if the answer was yes, or no? Which records do you already keep? When do you need the answer? Listen more than you talk. Write their answers down.
Numbers and tidy records
Two more foundations sit under every task in this track. The first is everyday statistics: averages, medians, percentages and the idea that a small or unfair sample can fool you. The second is tidy records: data entered accurately, one row per record and one column per fact, so it can be sorted, counted and checked. The two topics in this section teach both.