Reports and Analysis
July 2019
Outcomes of the 2019 Kambule and Maathai Awards
- Accompanying blog post
- Full report (pdf)
Today we proud to announce the winners of the three Indaba Awards: the Kambule Doctoral Award, the Kambule Masters Award, and the Maathai Impact Award. These awards recognise and celebrate African excellence in machine learning and artificial intelligence. We also repeat our report summarising the outcomes of this programme and share its key recommendations.
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March 2019
Together We Build African AI: Outcomes of the 2nd Annual Deep Learning Indaba
- Accompanying blog post.
- Full report (pdf)
The Deep Learning Indaba is an organisation whose mission is to Strengthen African Machine Learning. This mission is currently executed using three principal programmes, which aim to build communities, create leadership, and recognise excellence in research and innovation across our continent. The 2nd Deep Learning Indaba hosted Africa’s brightest talent from 35 countries across our continent, and showed that a strong community of researchers and innovators already exists within our continent. We are proud of how strong this community has grown, and the breadth of work that has been done. This report reviews the key outcomes of the 2018 Indaba and our vision for how it will evolve into the future. |
August 2018
Recognising African Excellence in Machine Learning: The Inaugural Kambule and Maathai Awards 2018
- Accompanying blog post.
- Full report (pdf)
The Kambule and Maathai awards represent the third independent programme we run as the Indaba Organisation, and form a key part of our mission to Strengthen African Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. We see our three principal programmes, the Deep Learning Indaba, the IndabaX, and the Kambule and Maathai awards as forming part of an integrated system. The Deep Learning Indaba strengthens African AI communities, the IndabaX creates African leadership in AI, and the annual awards, the programme that is the subject of this report, create spaces of recognition and aspiration, allowing new stories of African AI innovation to be told. This interacting and reinforcing trinity, of community and leadership and recognition, represents the concrete instantiation of our mission.
These two awards are intended to recognise ability, struggle, effort, and African excellence. The outcomes and key recommendations for enhancing this programme are described in this report. |
July 2018
Creating African Leadership in Artificial Intelligence: Outcomes of the IndabaX 2018
- Accompanying blog post.
- Full report (pdf)
The Indaba has a mission to strengthen African machine learning. This mission involves two pillars: to ensure that we as Africans are owners and shapers of the ongoing advances in AI, and to contribute to greater diversity in these fields of science and technology. We quickly realised that driving this mission through a one-week annual gathering would not be enough to achieve this mission. Instead, this could only be achieved by ensuring that local leaders are identified and expertise spread across African countries, and that the needed conversations around AI are driven by these local leaders and practitioners.
The Indaba𝕏 events were created to fulfil exactly this need by creating an opportunity for local leaders to come forward, and to further stimulate their practitioner communities to come together. And the outcomes of the first year of 13 IndabaX events is reviewed in this report along with the key recommendations needed to ensure its future success. |
November 2017
Strengthening African Machine Learning: Outcomes of the fist Deep Learning Indaba
- Accompanying blog post.
- Full report (pdf)
This report outlines the lessons learnt during our experience of the first Indaba. It outlines our understanding of the current state of African machine learning and AI. We expand on the reasons behind the Indaba’s inception, expand on the format that it took and why, the challenges we see facing students and academics, who form the foundation of an African AI innovation ecosystem, and the challenges of diversity and the ways that these can be addressed in the field.
We hope, and intend, that the Deep Learning Indaba will become an annual event in the African calendar; forming a connected pan-African machine learning community, all working to use this technology for the betterment of our communities and continent. We hope you will gain insight from this report, and use it to make your own contributions to strengthening African machine learning.
We hope, and intend, that the Deep Learning Indaba will become an annual event in the African calendar; forming a connected pan-African machine learning community, all working to use this technology for the betterment of our communities and continent. We hope you will gain insight from this report, and use it to make your own contributions to strengthening African machine learning.