AI in Africa healthcare falls short of potential

Two days after the World Health Organization declared coronavirus a pandemic on March 11, the South African data science competition platform Zindi set a challenge. Budding data scientists were asked to come up with a model to predict the spread of Covid-19 using open-source data. A fortnight later, more than 500 hopefuls had entered, vying for the $5,000 prize. Entries will be judged in June against the spread of the disease measured in global deaths. Celina Lee, who co-founded Zindi in Cape Town 18 months ago, describes the platform as a way of showcasing budding African data scientists and matching them with companies that have data but lack the expertise to exploit it.