Moorosi is a senior researcher on the Distributed AI Research Institute and has dropped in for the occasion from the mountain kingdom of Lesotho. Wearing her signature “Mama Africa” headwrap, she makes her way through the crowded hall.
Moments later, a cheerful set of Nigerian music begins to play over the speakers. Spontaneously, people pop up and gather across the stage, waving flags of many African nations. Moorosi laughs as she watches. “The vibe on the Indaba—the community spirit—is admittedly strong,” she says, clapping.
Moorosi is certainly one of the founding members of the Deep Learning Indaba, which began in 2017 from a nucleus of 300 people gathered in Johannesburg, South Africa. Since then, the event has expanded right into a prestigious pan-African movement with local chapters in 50 countries.
This 12 months, nearly 3,000 people applied to hitch the Indaba; about 1,300 were accepted. They hail primarily from English-speaking African countries, but this 12 months I noticed a brand new influx from Chad, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Sudan.
Moorosi tells me that the most important “prize” for a lot of attendees is to be hired by a tech company or accepted right into a PhD program. Indeed, the organizations I’ve seen on the event include Microsoft Research’s AI for Good Lab, Google, the Mastercard Foundation, and the Mila–Quebec AI Institute. But she hopes to see more homegrown ventures create opportunities inside Africa.
That evening, before the dinner, we’d each attended a panel on AI policy in Africa. Experts discussed AI governance and called for those developing national AI strategies to hunt more community engagement. People raised their hands to ask how young Africans could access high-level discussions on AI policy, and whether Africa’s continental AI strategy was being shaped by outsiders. Later, in conversation, Moorosi told me she’d prefer to see more African priorities (resembling African Union–backed labor protections, mineral rights, or safeguards against exploitation) reflected in such strategies.
On the last day of the Indaba, I ask Moorosi about her dreams for the longer term of AI in Africa. “I dream of African industries adopting African-built AI products,” she says, after a protracted moment. “We really want to indicate our work to the world.”
