“Tanzania AI community” at Ardhi University

https://ai.or.tz

Thursday 12th of September, Essa Mohamedali gave a lecture about the Tanzania AI community.

The Tanzania AI Community is a growing network that seeks to create a community across Tanzania by unlocking the potential of artificial intelligence (AI). The community focuses on promoting the responsible use of AI for both personal development and national growth.

Their mission is to create a future where responsible AI accelerates the growth of African economies. They also host events such as AI Talks, community meetups etc.. which serve as platforms for learning, discussion, and networking among AI enthusiasts and experts​

The communicty focusses on:

• Advocacy & awareness
  • blog, communication, podcasts, reports
• Capacity building
  • Offering training programs
• Applied research
  • idealab.ai => building AI solutions through grassroot communities by building open source projects
  • Grand challenges
  • Twiga => supporting tanzanian teachers for creating exam questions (model is based
    on national curriculum => and gives questions) All projects are open source

The AI ecosystem

The building blocks of the AI ecosystem are:

• Policy Makers
  • Current government initiatives:
    • digital economy strategy
    • ICT policy revision
    • AI in Health policy framework
    • VETA: diploma in data science
    • Digital Tanzania Project
• Academia
• International community
• Civil society
• Industry

Until now there are a number of tanzanian startups:

• XSenseAI
• Elsa Health
• Eshangazi
• Parrot AI
• Afya Intelligence
• Mipano app
• Sarufi AI
• Agrobot
• Mtabe
• Shule Direct
• Zanzibar mapper initiative (Zanzibar mapping data)
• Belltro

There are a number of international startups:

• trailguard AI (wildlife monitoring)
• Wildeyes AI
• Branch Money
• Ada health
• Macro eyes

The alternative of Kaggle is Zindi. A competitive data science platform: https://zindi.africa

Academia: udom, nmaist, udsm/dLab, muhas