Rinchi
TechInAfrica – Liquid Telecom, a Pan-African telecoms group has launched Zindi platform at the AI Expo African in Cape Town in order to support its new data science competition platform within Africa. It enables African data scientists to convene, collaborate, and compete as the solution for most pressing challenges across the continent.
The launch of the platform followed by three inaugural competitions that will be held in the next two to four months. The competitions include an Uber-sponsored challenge for data scientists to maximize public transportation in Nairobi and to process text in documents to divide them based on the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals framework. They offer up to $12,000 to the first set entrants of competitions. New competitions will be launched monthly.
It has always been a high demand in Africa to provide data scientists with the technical and analytical skills in order to understand exponential volumes of data and find solutions that are based on evidence. Realizing the demand, Liquid Telecom comes up with new ways to provide the development of data science skills in the region.
As one of its proven solutions, it has provided high-speed internet access and Azure credits to participants who compete in the DataHack for Financial Inclusion (DataHack4FI) competition. Additionally, Liquid Telecom also provides Strathmore Business School (SBS) in Nairobi with its new data analytics centre that focuses on data-driven research and practices for African business as well as opens masterclass programs in data science and AI for start-up companies in the region.
Through the promotion of Zindi platform, Liquid Telecom helps to unite data science ecosystem in the region to its users and innovation partners including leading innovation hubs, academic institutions, as well as start-up competitions.
According to the Group Chief Technology and Innovation Officer of Liquid Telecom, Ben Roberts, data science has a key role in the African digital future. Therefore, they want to ensure that technical skills they have developed meet the region’s needs in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Through Zindi platform, Liquid Telecom offers a solution for data scientists to understand and experiment with big sets of data.
In near the future, Liquid Telecom plans to hold its own competition on the Zindi platform to enables data scientists to examine its data sets and find applicable solutions in order to serve customers better.
As what is said by the CEO of Zindi, Celina Lee, Zindi offers data scientists—beginners or experts—to accelerate their skills and come up with solutions of the real-world problems. The partnership with Liquid Telecom will widen the demand of the Zindi platform in the continent. It enables data scientists to connect with more peers and access datasets.
