On Saturday and Sunday (19th - 20th March 2022) the emerging Innovators and scientists trained at YEESI Lab participated in UmojaHack Africa 2022, a data science event for African university students whereby students from across the continent come together virtually, form teams and compete to solve real world challenges that impact Africa by using a machine learning and Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions.

UmojaHack Africa 2022 is organized by a machine learning community portal in Africa called Zindi Africa and supported by multinational companies such as Microsoft, NVidia, InstaDeep, ABSA, H20 AI, and Data Science Academy. 

The two days event brought together more than 2000 students from more than 260 universities across African countries including Tanzania, Algeria, Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, DRC, Egypt, Eswatini, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Mauritius, Morocco, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, Tunisia, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

UmojaHack Africa 2022 is divided into 3 sub competitions categories which are beginner, intermediate and advanced. The emerging Innovators from the Sokoine University of Agriculture who are trained at YEESI Lab participated in beginner and intermediate sub competitions where they developed various machine learning models and sent them to Zindi Africa who will announce the winners in each category.

Zindi will offer a total prize pool of $10,000 USD to the teams placing 1st, 2nd and 3rd in each of the three challenges across all universities in Africa, as well as the top-ranked team or individual from each African country that didn’t already win a top three prize, across all challenges. There will also be additional (non-monetary) prizes for teams and participants including learning and career opportunities.

For more information and latest updates about YEESI Lab, visit them at www.yeesi.org/news