Together We Build the Indaba

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’.

Expected country representation at the 2018 Indaba.

​As a community of technologists, researchers, innovators and learners, we build many things: we build skills; we build software; we build products; we build teams; we build communities; we build leaders. Together, we can do even more. We can build the future of our continent. ​

The Deep Learning Indaba is the annual gathering of the African artificial intelligence community. In 2017, we called on everyone to spread what they learnt, and to spread it for the good of our societies: to be the talking drums of Africa renewed.  Over the last year, this community has grown and spread enormously. And we will see this growth first-hand when the 2nd annual Indaba meets from 9-14 September. Last year, we received 750 applications, but our space only allowed us to accept 300. This year, we received 1300 applications and were only able to accept 500. For every person that we accepted there are more than two others who we could not accept. We are succeeding in building a strong and vibrant community. But much more needs to be done.

This year, our call-to-action for every participant and supporter of the Indaba during the week and beyond, is to build new partnerships, projects, and teams; reach out to others in the community from across the continent, and find new ways of creating value.

The Indaba, and those attending, must be as Mandela expected: ‘a partnership of a community determined to take responsibility for its own upliftment’.

There are many things you can do to fulfil this responsibility:

• Directory of Africans in Machine Learning. Add your name to a new Directory of Africans in Machine Learning - making it easier for everyone to know who is active in the community and what roles they play. You can also let us know if you would be willing to be a mentor. Add your name here.​
• Mailing list. Welcome others to the community: ask them to join the African Machine Learning and Data Science community mailing list to stay connected.
• Technical Material. Build your knowledge base, and that of others: share the slides and recordings of the Indaba lectures. All videos will be available on our website and on our youtube channel.
• Coding and Practicals. Build your practical knowledge, and that of others: use the practical material to develop your own coding skills and of those you know. All the practicals are available on our webpage and through github.
• IndabaX. Build local leadership in each of our countries and towns: consider sending a proposal to organise an IndabaX in your region in 2019.
• Reach out. Reach out to us to let us know if/how you want get involved with the Indaba’s work.

The spirit of Masakhane is the theme you will see running throughout the Indaba: it is in the code of conduct that everyone is expected to uphold; in the people that come together from the 30 African countries (and 42 worldwide); and in the community of sponsors, tutors and mentors.  All working together to Strengthen African Machine Learning.

Let us all build together, and let us build each other.
Masakhane!

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