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        • Alta De Waal
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        • Konstantina Palla
        • Marc Deisenroth
        • Nando de Freitas
        • Nyalleng Moorosi
        • Richard Klein
        • Stephan Gouws
        • Ulrich Paquet
        • Vukosi Marivate
        • Willie Brink
        • Yann Dauphin
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      • 2017 Organisers

IndabaX 2019: Growing the Footprint of African Machine Learning

11/2/2019

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The 2019 IndabaX meetings will take place in 26 countries across our African continent, during the months of March to May. We are proud to enable these communities and future leaders. African machine learning is strong and thriving.
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Announcing the IndabaX 2019

17/10/2018

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Submit an application
The IndabaX programme started in 2018 as an experiment in strengthening our machine learning community beyond the annual Deep Learning Indaba, to allow more people to contribute to the conversation on artificial intelligence and machine learning.

A Deep Learning IndabaX is a locally-organised Indaba that helps ensure that knowledge and capacity in machine learning is spread more widely.

In 2018, we supported 13 IndabaX events that were run locally in different countries across Africa, growing our community by over 1,000 attendees.
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If you attended the Deep Learning Indaba in 2017 or 2018, and think your local community would benefit from such an event, we encourage you to organise an IndabaX at your institution. We leave details of what exactly happens at an IndabaX to those who take on the role of organising one. All we ask is that you organise your IndabaX in the period of March - May 2019.

The Deep Learning Indaba will support as many of these meetings as we can. Our support can include anything from grants to financially support your event, help in planning and speaker invitations, publicity through the website, or in any other ways that local organisers think would be useful. An IndabaX can be small or big. Be as creative as possible. 

Your IndabaX could be:
  • A one day meeting to stream leading online lectures, group learning around a specific set of topics, code teaching, research-replication sessions, or poster sessions;
  • A structured series of tutorial lectures by invited speakers from the country, continent, or abroad on a focussed topic;
  • A one-day workshop that brings people together to discuss their latest research with short talks and a panel discussion, bringing together groups across your university;
  • A hackathon around a specific dataset or important challenge.
  • Or a mixture of the above and other formats you think would work.

We do require that all IndabaX events partner with a local university. We are also aiming to support one event per country, and so please try reach out to anyone in your local community who could strengthen your event.

This is your way to help build your local machine learning community towards strengthening African machine learning, in the spirit of our 2018 theme of Masakhane: we build together!

To make this possible, we ask interested groups to complete our online application form describing your meeting. 

Send us your proposals by 15 December 2018. Successful local IndabaX organisers will be notified by 31 January 2019, and will receive funding as soon as possible thereafter. Send any questions to indabax@deeplearningindaba.com.
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Together We Build the Indaba

21/8/2018

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By building our communities and building each other, together, we strengthen African machine learning. This process of building is critical to our community; and is our theme for the 2018 Indaba. Inspired by a speech given by Nelson Mandela in 1995, we make our call for 2018: Masakhane! meaning ‘we build together’.
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Expected country representation at the 2018 Indaba.

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Winners of the Kambule and Maathai Awards

30/7/2018

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Today we are proud to announce the winners of the first Inaugural Kambule and Maathai awards which recognise and celebrate African excellence in machine learning and artificial intelligence. We also release our report summarising the outcomes of this programme and share its key recommendations. ​
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Creating African Leadership in AI: Review of the IndabaX2018

1/7/2018

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Today we release a report that summarises the outcomes of the IndabaX2018 events: summarising its impact, the key recommendations to improve the programme going forward, and celebrating the 13 new IndabaX communities.
Our mission to Strengthen African Machine Learning has given us the privilege of engaging with some of the most energetic of African citizens: all who share our vision of seeing Africans as owners and shapers of the ongoing advances in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. Yet, it would not have been inaccurate, even a few months ago, to describe the state of African AI and its leaderships as sparse, scattered, or existing in pockets. But we believe, through our work with the Indaba𝕏, which this report describes, that this is no longer the case. 
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The Indaba𝕏 represents some of our most impactful work as an organisation thus far, and its outcomes have made us immensely proud. ​
​
‘The central cultural fact of African life’, as Anthony Appiah famously says, ‘is not in its sameness, but in its enormous diversity’. The Indaba𝕏
, by creating and supporting local leadership in individual countries, sought to celebrate this diversity. The Indaba𝕏 events were meant as incubators for local ideas and solutions that accommodated the varying levels of experience and motivations, and the different modes of communication and understanding across countries. Yet, we also saw the Indaba𝕏 as a way to create a new type of pan-African unity, one created through a shared commitment to science and technology, using machine learning and artificial intelligence and the opportunities it holds for the advancement of our continent.


We hope, like the annual Indaba, that the Indaba𝕏 events will also become a regular fixture within the African AI calendar, and we work towards making this a reality. We are humbled by the leaders who passionately and selflessly push African AI forward, and who made the Indaba𝕏 events such a success; this report is dedicated to them.


​
​Read the full report available at deeplearningindaba.com/reports

Creating African Leadership in Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning Indaba Organisation, July 2018.

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Ensuring Safe and Open Indabas

12/6/2018

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Overview
​
The 2018 Indaba - the annual gathering of the African AI community - will likely be the world’s largest gathering dedicated to teaching and debate at the state of the art in machine learning and artificial intelligence. As the main Indaba grows in size, and as we  spread into many smaller IndabaX meetings, it becomes important to make a strong commitment to all the Indaba’s attendees that there will be a welcoming, electrifying, and importantly,
safe environment in which everyone can meet and learn.

This necessitates a code of conduct, and our's is designed around a philosophy, one that manifests in many ways across our continent, of familyhood and unity. The code of conduct gives everyone a clear understanding of the expected standards of behaviour. Every attendee will have agreed to this code of conduct before registration, and can be assured that we have a clear process for handling any reports or incidents.

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Apply to Join the Deep Learning Indaba 2018

9/3/2018

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The Deep Learning Indaba is the annual gathering of the African machine learning community, a week that in 2018 will be the world’s largest teaching event on the state of the art in machine learning and artificial intelligence. This year’s Indaba meets in Stellenbosch, South Africa from 9-14 September. Attendees will meet their peers from across our continent and beyond, be taught by world-leading experts in the field, learn how to implement their theoretical knowledge as solutions in code, ask advice about careers and research, debate the implications of new technologies on our continent’s future, and strengthen the African machine learning community.

Applications to participate in the 2018 Indaba are now open. We encourage everyone interested in machine learning, data science, and artificial intelligence (and other related areas of statistical sciences and engineering) to apply, and to encourage others they know to apply as well. This year, the Indaba hopes to welcome 600 people.

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The Kambule and Maathai Awards: Awarding Excellence in African Machine Learning

14/2/2018

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​deeplearningindaba.com/awards
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It will not be surprising that across our African continent, machine learning is being developed and deployed in ways both fundamental and transformative. In both research and applications, African innovators continue to enhance our knowledge, and address the intractable challenges facing our societies and people: whether these be in the mathematical underpinnings of reasoning and control; in developing solutions for food security, public health, and water and disease management; or in unravelling the mysteries of the universe. We celebrate the success of these African Artificial Intelligence innovators. And to do this, we introduce two new awards, the Kambule and Maathai awards, which recognise excellence in the research and applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence by African researchers and technologists.

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The Drum Beats On: The Deep Learning Indaba 2018/19

9/2/2018

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The Indaba Abantu
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Today we celebrate an anniversary: the Deep Learning Indaba was formed during this week one year ago, with a mission to strengthen African machine learning. Our first Indaba was held in September 2017, and was everything we had hoped for. We saw the creation of a new community, one united by a shared commitment to science and learning, and the potential it has to transform our societies for the better. We executed a technical programme of sharing, teaching and debate around the state-of-the-art in modern machine learning, whose mastery is essential in ensuring that we as Africans become, not just users and receivers, but contributors, shapers and owners of the global advances in machine learning and artificial intelligence. We saw Africans, from across the continent and in all its diversity, represented and included. And a few months later, we saw 20 of our participants at the NIPS conference for their first time.
Today, we are proud to announce our main week-long events for the next two years!
  • The Indaba 2018 in Stellenbosch, South Africa; and
  • The Indaba 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya.

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The IndabaX: Two Weeks of Machine Learning Across Africa

27/1/2018

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Read in 2 minutes. 
Indaba Organisers
The first Deep Learning Indaba ended with the formation of a community of Africans who spread across our continent with a commitment to share their knowledge in the principles and practice of modern machine learning and artificial intelligence. Our task was to now further empower our attendees; to become ‘the talking drums of Africa renewed’.

As a first step, we established the Deep Learning IndabaX: an ongoing experiment with the ways in which we can strengthen African machine learning: through locally-organised one day workshops or meetings that spread knowledge and build local expertise and networks—what we think is the best way to include more people in the conversation around artificial intelligence and machine learning.

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Remembering the Indaba and Reporting on its Outcomes

8/11/2017

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On the 10th of September this year (2017), we took our first uncertain step through a doorway. For all the months prior, starting in February, we operated in the realm of imagination, of planning, of spreadsheets and budgets, driven by a mission to ‘Strengthen African Machine Learning’. Crossing the threshold that Sunday afternoon, we entered an environment that was everything we had hoped for. We had seen the creation of a new community, one united not by historical injustices, but by a shared commitment to science and learning, and the potential it has to transform our societies for the better. We executed a technical programme of sharing, teaching and debate around the state-of-the-art in modern machine learning, whose mastery is essential to realising the vision of a transformed and prosperous continent. And we saw Africans, from across the continent and in all its diversity, represented and included. 

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Recognising Research Excellence at the Indaba

9/10/2017

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​An aim of the Deep Learning Indaba was to make the excellent research in all areas of machine learning and data science more visible, offering a showcase of the continental research base. We believe we took the first positive steps in this direction. It is our privilege to be able to recognise the excellence in research shown by all the students at the Indaba: they are clear evidence of the capacity in deep learning and machine learning that exists in our continent. They have inspired us all to do our best work.

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To be The Talking Drums of Africa: Sharing Knowledge Beyond the Indaba

3/9/2017

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Read in 2 minutes ● Indaba Organisers ​
In one week, the first Deep Learning Indaba begins: a gathering of our African community to teach, learn and debate the state-of-the-art in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Our aim during the week will be to build an understanding of the principles and practice of modern machine learning. Of equal importance is the creation of an environment that enables continental collaborations, a raised awareness of the breadth of machine learning career-paths, and that fosters new understandings and friendships.
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Left: African nationals attending the Indaba. Right: Flags of the nationalities represented at the Indaba.

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Missing Continents: A Study using Accepted NIPS Papers

27/7/2017

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Read in 2 minutes ● Shakir Mohamed, Emily Muller, Vukosi Marivate
We pose a question to you: At the leading machine learning venue, the annual Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NIPS), how many accepted papers in 2016 came from research groups on the African continent? Or to be more general, how many accepted papers have at least one of its authors from a research institution in Africa? The answer: zero. And what for the South American continent? Similarly. Zero.
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Changes in NIPS accepted papers by country (excl. US) from 2006-2016. The vertical axis is GDP per capita in US$ per year, and the horizontal axis the number of accepted papers.

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Who are the Machine Learning Scientists? Introducing our Speakers

15/7/2017

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Read in 2 minutes ● Indaba Organisers ​
​See our full list of speakers here, where you can find links to their individual biographies.
Who are the machine learning scientists? This was the question we asked ourselves during our planning for the Deep Learning Indaba. In our answer, we saw a fresco of geometry and colour that would make even Esther Mahlangu proud: a thriving community of different peoples, backgrounds and viewpoints, and whose support we could use in our mission to strengthen African machine learning. We found a scientific community that was everything we hoped for.
Speakers at the Deep Learning Indaba 2017
Speakers at the Deep Learning Indaba 2017

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  • Home
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  • IndabaX 2019
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    • IndabaX 2018 >
      • Call for IndabaX2018
      • IndabaX Botswana
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  • Indaba 2019
    • Code of Conduct
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  • About
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    • Indaba 2018 >
      • Schedule
      • Poster Sessions
      • Parallel Sessions
      • Speakers
      • Slides and Videos
      • Women in ML
      • Sponsors
      • Payments
      • Important Contacts
      • Accommodation
      • Travel and Venue
      • Background Material
    • Indaba 2017 >
      • 2017 Recordings
      • Speakers >
        • All Speakers
        • Alta De Waal
        • Anima Anandkumar
        • Benjamin Rosman
        • Bubacarr Bah
        • Danielle Belgrave
        • George Konidaris
        • Konstantina Palla
        • Marc Deisenroth
        • Nando de Freitas
        • Nyalleng Moorosi
        • Richard Klein
        • Stephan Gouws
        • Ulrich Paquet
        • Vukosi Marivate
        • Willie Brink
        • Yann Dauphin
      • Programme >
        • Schedule
        • Ask a Question: Q&A tool
        • Posters Sessions
        • Industry Exhibitions
        • Pre-Indaba Work
        • Background Topics 2017
      • Sponsors
      • Logistics >
        • Venue
        • Accommodation
        • Travel
      • 2017 Organisers