Finding solutions to improve turtle reidentification and supporting machine learning projects across Africa. Protecting the ecosystems around us is critical to safeguarding the future of our planet and all its living citizens. Fortunately, new artificial intelligence (AI) systems are making progress in conservation efforts worldwide, helping tackle complex problems at scale – from studying the behaviour of animal communities in the Serengeti to help conserve the diminishing ecosystem, to spotting poachers and their wounded prey to prevent species going extinct. As part of our mission to help benefit humanity with the technologies we develop, it's important we ensure diverse groups of people build the AI systems of the future so that it's equitable and fair. This includes broadening the machine learning (ML) community and engaging with wider audiences on addressing important problems using AI.

Zindi is much more than a machine learning platform. It's the place where people come to learn, collaborate, and connect while solving problems that really matter. In a recent survey, we discovered that about half of the users on Zindi were thinking about starting their own AI business. Zindi co-founder Ekow Duker dives into taking charge of your own destiny, and gives some tips on how to make sure you succeed. Let's start with asking why on earth you would want to do this right now.

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.

CAPE TOWN 17th March – AI Expo Africa is the continent's largest B2B trade-focused artificial intelligence (AI) business event. The expo, which is now in its third year, will be held at Century City Convention Centre in Cape Town on 3rd and 4th September 2020. Zindi, Learning Machines – which provides a number of services across machine learning and data science – and FinChatBot, which develops AI-powered chat bots for the financial services industry, will showcase their solutions at AI Expo Africa's Innovation Cafe. Other companies that will exhibit at AI Expo Africa's Innovation Cafe include data science specialists Ashanti AI and visitor management solutions provider WizzPass. AI Expo Africa Event Co-founder Dr Nick Bradshaw stated, "It's great to welcome back supporters like City of Cape Town, FinChatBot and Zindi, the latter launched at our 2018 event and have gone onto be a massive success. It's also great to introduce brand new supporters and companies like Learning Machines, WizzPass and Ashanti AI. Our goal is to promote the newest and best AI, RPA and Data Science companies and startups via our various media platforms to maximise brand exposure and generate new business for the growing 4IR community of suppliers that is emerging in Africa."

Microsoft is looking for entrepreneurs to join its latest programme. Specifically social entrepreneurs as part of its recently launched Global Social Entrepreneurship programme, which has been made available in 140 countries, including South Africa. The programme forms part of the Microsoft for Startups initiative and aims to give entrepreneurs access to the necessary technology they need in order to get their socially-focused projects running. "The Global Social Entrepreneurship programme has benefits aimed specifically at elevating startups addressing an important social and/or environmental challenge through their products, services or operations," Microsoft explained regarding the announcement. "Solving global social and environmental challenges requires synergy of the right technology, partners, conducive environment and technology. When startups work together with investors, enterprises, governments, non-profits and communities, we are able to unlock new potentials," adds Microsoft4Afrika director, Amrote Abdella.

Now that we understand what feature engineering is, let's go straight into the practical aspect of this article. The first is the Loan Default Prediction dataset hosted on Zindi by Data Science Nigeria, and the second -- also hosted on Zindi -- is the Sendy Logistics dataset by Sendy. You can find the descriptions of the dataset and the corresponding machine learning tasks in the links above. If you have cloned the repo, you'll have a folder of the datasets and the notebook used for this article and can follow along easily. First, let's import some libraries and the datasets: We can see that the loan dataset has three tables.

Over the past decade, computer vision has had a tremendous impact. From self-automated cars to space exploration, its various uses in surveillance and image analysis has bettered the world. The in-depth analysis of video footage and images using deep machine learning models has become a powerful tool that most companies and even governments are taking notice of. Recognition and tracking - the computer tries to link any pattern or feature in the image to a previous feature or activity in its database. Prediction - lastly it predicts possible behaviours of the object, and how it will react in the future.

Zindi is convening Africa's data scientists to create AI solutions for complex problems. Founded in 2018, the Cape Town-based startup allows companies, NGOs or government institutions to host online competitions around data-oriented challenges. Zindi's platform also coordinates a group of more than 4,000 data scientists based in Africa who can enroll to join a competition, submit their solution sets, move up a leader board and win the challenge -- for a cash prize payout. The highest purse so far has been $12,000, split across the top three data scientists in a competition, according to Zindi co-founder Celina Lee. Competition hosts receive the results, which they can use to create new products or integrate into their existing systems and platforms. Zindi's model has gained the attention of some big corporate names in and outside of Africa.