Africa’s hackathon to challenge students’ minds

By ANA Reporter Last updated Mar 25, 2021

Data science students from 120 universities in 21 African countries will gather in their labs and in their homes to compete in UmojaHack Africa 2021.

Students sit in front of a laptop and give each other a high five. — Zindi is a data science competition platform that aims to build the data science ecosystem in Africa. Picture: Supplied

CAPE TOWN, March 25 (ANA) – Data science competition platform Zindi will host Africa’s largest data science hackathon for students this month.

“UmojaHack Africa has proven to be a game-changing event, especially when so many young people have been impacted by the global pandemic,” Zindi CEO Celina Lee said in a statement on Thursday.

Lee said this is a chance for students from across the continent to come together to learn, compete and have fun.

The event is scheduled from March 27 to 28, when data science students from 120 universities in 21 African countries will compete from their labs and their homes.

It will be broadcast live on Zindi’s YouTube channel and umojahack.africa, and the competition will take place on zindi.africa, Africa’s biggest data science competition platform.

Over the two days, the students will learn and develop their data science skills, working on real-world challenges, and stand a chance to win more than US$10,000 in prizes.

Countries that will be represented on the hackathon weekend include South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Tunisia, Algeria, Senegal and Tanzania.

UmojaHack is about building skills, creating new machine-learning applications to solve real-world problems and forging new connections among the students and within the industry, Lee said.

Four students stand in front of a large building. — Data scientists and students come to Zindi to hone their skills, build their professional profile, connect with job opportunities and share ideas with their peers across Africa and beyond. Picture: Supplied

Zindi also welcomed several sponsors for the event, including Microsoft, InstaDeep, Standard Bank, NVIDIA, DeepMind and Old Mutual.

“We are incredibly excited about this event spanning over 100 African universities and helping thousands of African students leverage their data science and AI skills to solve African problems,” principal director for software partnerships at Microsoft Chris Lwanga said.

Lwanga said Microsoft believes in empowering every organisation and person to do more.

Standard Bank’s chief innovation officer, Adrian Vermooten, said: “Standard Bank is deeply invested in funding and implementing critical data science skills development programmes, such as Zindi’s UmojaHack Africa 2021 hackathon, to position Africa as a serious competitor in the world’s rapidly emerging data-driven sector.”

“We are incredibly excited to see what the students come up with in just one weekend,” said Lee.

This is the second annual UmojaHack Africa event, building on the success of 2020’s inaugural event, which saw more than 1,000 students joining the competition from 56 African universities.

Zindi is a data science competition platform that aims to build the data science ecosystem in Africa.

It hosts a community of more than 24,000 data scientists across Africa, dedicated to solving the world’s most pressing challenges through machine learning and artificial intelligence.

– African News Agency (ANA); Editing by Yaron Blecher

– African News Agency (ANA)