Dina Machuve (Nelson Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology) “Machine Learning Competitions: The Outlook from Africa”

The current AI landscape in Africa mainly focuses on capacity building. The ongoing efforts to strengthen the AI capacity in Africa are organized in summer schools, workshops, meetups, competitions and one long-term program at the Masters level. The main AI initiatives driving the AI capacity building agenda in Africa include a) Deep Learning Indaba, b) Data Science Africa, c) Data Science Nigeria, d) Nairobi Women in Machine Learning and Data Science, e) Zindi and f) The African Master's in Machine Intelligence (AMMI) at AIMS. The talk will summarize our experience on low participation of African AI developers at machine learning competitions and our recommendations to address the current challenges.