Economic Signal Mapper: Forecasting Kenya's Cost of Living with Global Insights

Project Overview

The Economic Signal Mapper is aimed at helping Kenyan citizens, journalists and policymakers understand how global economic shifts impact everyday expenses. By combining web scraping, time series forecasting and correlation analysis the platform looks to reveal the connections between international markets and local prices.

Key Features

The following are the key features we are looking at when developing this platform:

1. Real-time Price Tracking: Monitor prices from major supermarkets, local markets and potentially even transport services.
2. Global Signal Integration: Track FOREX rates, oil prices and commodity indices.
3. Predictive Analytics: Forecast price trends using ensemble ML models.
4. Interactive Dashboard: User-friendly visualisation of complex economic data.

Data Sources

Local Price Data

In terms of local prices we considered the following:

1. Supermarkets: Naivas, Quickmart, Carrefour, etc.

Global Economic Signals

When considering global economic signals, we will look at:

1. Forex Rates: USD/KES, EUR/KES, GBP/KES
2. Oil Prices: Brent Crude, WTI
3. Commodities: Wheat, Maize, Coffee, Tea prices
4. Economic Indicators: US inflation, ECB rates, global market indices