Microsoft supports Machine Learning in Africa

Sep 11, 2018

machine learning

Deep Learning Indaba 2018 is taking place at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. The event put together by a group of researchers who realized the machine learning landscape in Africa was non existant. They share that “the African continent has been absent from the contemporary machine learning landscape the last decade”.

At the 30th conference on Neural Information Processing in 2016, one of the world’s foremost gatherings on machine learning, there was not a single accepted paper from a researcher at an African institution.
In fact, for the last decade, the entire African continent has been absent from the contemporary machine learning landscape. 

This landscape is surely changing with the announcement of a Google AI research center in Africa, which will open later this year in Accra. Microsoft has joined this ecosystem in the region by sponsoring Deep Learning Indaba 2018. Microsoft talks about its commitment to strengthening Machine Learning in Africa by supporting the event. 

Deep Learning Indaba is a weeks event of teaching, sharing and debate around machine learning and artificial intelligence. It aims to be a catalyst for strengthening machine learning in Africa. The conference will offer keynote sessions, hands on workshops, poster sessions, networking and mentoring sessions.

Microsoft engineers and researchers will speak at the event. They will also host a Women in Machine Learning session to encourage, support and unite women. Microsoft also said “as there will be a high number of students in attendance, our panel also highlights diverse career paths, from academia to industrial research, to applied machine learning, to start-ups”.