14th August, Cape Town, South Africa – Ixio Analytics is pleased to announce the launch of Zindi, a data science competition platform on 9 September 2018 at AI Expo Africa. Zindi provides a central platform for a community of mostly African data scientists to convene, collaborate, and compete to solve the continent’s most pressing challenges. Zindi is the first platform of its kind in the African market.

Zindi will launch with a set of inaugural competitions that tackle challenges such as optimizing public transportation in Nairobi, automatically processing text in documents to classify them according to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals framework, and maximizing the impact of social media posts. The total prize money up for grabs with this first set of competitions is expected to be at least $20,000 USD, with new competitions continuing to roll-out every month.

Zindi is the first platform of its kind in the African market

“As a start-up looking to digitize the transport sector through online/mobile bookings and cashless payments, our data is growing exponentially. We don’t have the resources to spend on expensive data science consultants. Zindi allows us to crowdsource a custom-built machine learning solution for our business and identify local data science talent,” says Daniel Mutonga, Sales Executive of Mobiticket, one of Zindi’s inaugural competition hosts.  Sameer Jooma the Director of Innovation and Analytics for the African region at AB InBev says, “Platforms like Zindi enable us and other organizations to delve into uncharted territory through data exploratoration. It creates the ideal environment for analytics to be brought to life and thrive in an unstructured world, with solutions being built in Africa, for Africa.”

How does Zindi work?

By hosting a competition on Zindi, organizations- corporates, start-ups, non-profits, and governments- can get their problems solved by a growing community of Zindi data scientists. Zindi works with the organization to define its business problems, prepare and source the datasets, and post the competition for the Zindi community to solve.

“With Zindi, organizations will be able to quickly and affordably source the best of the best data science solutions and talent. This will give them a true competitive advantage in the market,” says Megan Yates, Chief Scientist, Ixio Analytics.  Data scientists download the datasets to build machine learning and artificial intelligence models. Competitions are open for two to four months. Upon submission, solutions are automatically evaluated by the platform based on accuracy and data scientists can see their ranking on a live public leaderboard. Data scientists can win up to $50,000 USD in prize money.

“Whether you’re a novice or an expert, data scientists can come to Zindi to sharpen their skills on real-world problems, connect with their peers, access tutorials and job listings, build their profiles, and win money while doing it!” says Celina Lee, Zindi.

How to get involved
Zindi will have a start-up booth in the Innovation Cafe (No.14)  at AI Expo Africa running from 10-11th September and will also present in the Innovation Track of the speaking programme.  Organizations that are interested in hosting a competition can contact Zindi for a free consultation. Data scientists can enter competitions on Zindi starting 9 September by registering at www.zindi.africa. For more information, contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Ixio Analytics
Ixio Analytics is a data-led modelling and analytics company that serves clients across the African region, with offices in South Africa and Ghana. Ixio takes a business-led and science-driven approach to data. Problems are solved using the full weight of advanced statistical programming ecosystems, like R and python. Ixio specializes in statistics, machine learning, unstructured and NoSQL data mining, pattern recognition, iterative solution engines, and heuristic techniques. For more information, visit www.ixioanalytics.com.  Press contact: Celina Lee  This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

About AI Expo Africa
Taking place on 9-11 September 2018, Century City Conference Centre, Cape Town, South Africa, AI Expo Africa 2018 is focusing on real world applications & trends driving the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Economy in Africa and seeking to build the largest Business focused AI Community across the continent. With 400+ delegates, 50+ speaker programme, 40+ exhibitor Expo Hall, Innovation Cafe and workshops, the event is aimed at CxO / C Suite delegates with the primary goal of educating business leaders about AI applications and opportunities impacting the Enterprise today as well as generating real business and learning opportunities for sponsors, speakers & AI innovators across the region. If you would like to join the event as a delegate or would like take up one of the exhibition, Innovation cafe or speaking opportunities simply visit the links below

• Register– Save via our Early Bird ticket sale
• Speak– Submit a paper for one of our speaking opportunities
• Sponsor– Secure your company a place in the Expo Hall & networking evening

Press & Media

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• Phone: +27 7957 33206
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/aiexpoafrica
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