Crowdsourcing platform Toloka rolls out 20,000 new jobs for Ghanaians

African Tolokers walk the walk to develop geoservices as the Global crowdsourcing platform (Toloka)  rolls out 20,000 new jobs and opportunities for Ghanaians to earn income while helping their communities

ACCRA, Ghana, 15 June 2021: Pedestrian tasks that create the data for geoservices such as maps, navigation, and taxi are rising in popularity on crowdsourcing platform Toloka, with Ghana revealed to be a top spot for Tolokers to walk to locations and gather data.

The Crowdsourcing platform Toloka

Toloka is a cloud-based platform which generates machine learning data at scale by harnessing the wisdom of the crowd from around the world. It operates a crowdsourced model that lets any individual in any country log on, complete tasks, and earn extra income in their spare time. Toloka has over 9 million people worldwide registered as Toloka’s performers – dubbed “Tolokers” – and the platform’s active users count approaches the average of 200,000 people monthly. Of the total user population, more than 360,000 people are located in 44 African countries, and the top five African countries with the highest concentration of Tolokers are Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana, and Cote d’Ivoire.

Ghana stands out as one of the top three countries in the world with the most activity on a unique but important type of task: pedestrian challenges. Tolokers in Accra have walked to more than 6,000 local stores, restaurants, city services, and other types of locations to gather data that not only improves maps and navigation, but ensures accurate information such as location, hours, contact information, parking, and entrances. During the week of June 15, Toloka is rolling out 20,000 new stops in Accra that need to be labelled, creating access to a new, large pool of paid tasks for Ghanaian Tolokers.

Read: How To Earn Money Working Online in 2021 on Toloka.Yandex

Geolocation services are of particular importance during the pandemic, as the data indicates to the local community the availability of various businesses and services. This helps people save time searching for accurate business details and avoid wasting time by traveling to inaccurate addresses or locations that are closed. Alongside Ghana, Spain and Russia round out the global top three countries where Tolokers gravitate toward geolocation-related tasks.

Olga Megorskaya, Toloka CEO, comments: “When most people think about how Toloka creates rich new datasets for the development of artificial intelligence, they imagine people inside and sitting in front of computers, but pedestrian tasks are vital for geolocation services to operate smoothly and efficiently. By choosing to perform these important tasks, Tolokers in Ghana and the more than 100 other countries where Tolokers are located are improving their own communities by ensuring geolocation information is accurate and up to date. These types of tasks are increasingly popular in Africa, but Toloka data shows pedestrian challenges are rising in other cities, as well. It’s a trend we hope continues, as pedestrian tasks are a key aspect of our digital future where offline and online functions integrate and operate seamlessly.”

To support this growth, Toloka has robust data security protocols in place and is currently obtaining an International Organisation for Standaridization (ISO) certification to confirm its sustainable world-class data management practices.

In line with expanding global adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), the data-labelling industry has also experienced considerable growth in recent years, with McKinsey estimates placing this industry’s current worth at around $2 billion. As the prevalence of AI continues to grow, so will the need for data-labelling — an industry, which is set to reach $12.1 billion by 2025, according to Toloka’s calculations.

About Toloka

Launched in 2014 and incorporated in Switzerland, Toloka is a crowdsourced data-labelling platform, serving the needs of approximately 2,000 businesses worldwide and growing. Toloka relies on a geographically diverse labour pool of around 9 million registered users – 200,000 of which are active monthly, on average – located in over 100 countries across all time-zones, providing 24/7 support. Its powerful open API enables clients to build scalable and fully automated human-in-the-loop machine learning pipelines. Toloka employs smart matching of tasks and performers and AI-based predictions of performance quality to ensure trusted results. The platform is governed by robust data security protocols and Toloka is in the process of obtaining data management certification from an international standards body (ISO).