Call for Registration
The Africa Data Science Workshop brought together a vibrant community of data scientists, researchers, policymakers, and practitioners from across the continent and beyond. Organized around engaging paper presentations and dynamic panel discussions, the workshop provided an interactive platform for sharing insights and exploring practical applications of data science in addressing Africa’s most pressing challenges.
Participants interested in presenting their work were invited to submit short abstracts highlighting innovative uses of data science methods in solving real-world problems across various sectors, including:
- Data Science for the Sustainable Development Goals
- Healthcare
- Agriculture
- Wildlife Conservation
- Disaster Response
- Geospatial Modelling
- Telecommunications Data Modelling
- Economic Monitoring
The panel discussions brought together a diverse range of stakeholders — from government representatives and development practitioners to industry experts and academics — fostering a collaborative environment where innovative, solution-driven ideas flourished.
In addition, participants developed a framework aimed at attracting and nurturing young African talent, mentors, and researchers from academia, the public sector, and private industry. This initiative focused on strengthening networks and building capacity to harness big data and real-time analytics for the public good, paving the way for a more data-driven future for Africa.
Workshop programme outline:
Workshop Day 1
Time |
Presentation | |
|---|---|---|
|
08:00-09:00 |
Arrival and Registration | |
|
09:00-09:30 |
Workshop Opening | |
|
09:30-10:00 |
Keynote 1: Who are health data scientists | |
|
10:00-10:20 |
Using spatial features of human settlement to predict epidemic properties | |
|
10:20-10:40 |
Understanding maternal health service utilization | |
|
10:40-11:10 |
Coffee Break | |
|
11:10-11:30 |
Machine learning for targeted communication in an emergency | |
|
11:30-11:40 |
Crowdsourcing ‘Big’ clinical data from small health facilities | |
|
11:40-11:50 |
Data Revolution: A Fitting Model for Development countries | |
|
11:50-12:00 |
Enabling Data Revolution | |
|
12:00-12:10 |
How Data Science is solving life-threatening problems in Africa plus the way forward | |
|
12:10-13:00 |
Health Data Science Panel | |
|
13:00-14:00 |
Lunch Break | |
|
14:00-14:30 |
Keynote 2: Understanding Africa's Wildlife Heritage Through the lens of Genome Data | |
|
14:30-15:00 |
Keynote 3: Habari Node's Experience creating a Datacenter and Cloud Services Infrastructure | |
|
15:00-15:20 |
Mining voter sentiments from Twitter data for the 2016 Uganda Presidential elections | |
|
15:20-15:40 |
Using Social Media for Public Safety Monitoring | |
|
15:40-16:00 |
Algorithmic opportunities in revealing trends of food crisis from news online articles | |
|
16:00-16:20 |
Mobile Phone Data for Disasters Management | |
|
16:20-17:00 |
Panel Discussion - Mining Social Networks |
Workshop Day 2
Time |
Presentation | |
|---|---|---|
|
09:00-09:30 |
Keynote 4: IoT data and insights for everyone | |
|
09:30-10:00 |
Keynote 5: Addressing challenges through geospatial modelling in Kenya | |
|
10:00-10:20 |
KAZNET: Leveraging digital and crowdsourcing technology for livestock market data collection | |
|
10:20-10:40 |
Sensing with Farmers; crowdsourced adhoc crop surveillance | |
|
10:40-11:00 |
A time series review of forest production and trade trends across the tropical region | |
|
11:00-11:30 |
Coffee Break | |
|
11:30-11:40 |
Convolutional Neural Network for Appliance Recognition in Energy Disaggregation | |
|
11:40-11:50 |
Images - the all important developing world data format | |
|
11:50-12:00 |
Modeling Wireless Sensor Network For Forest Temperature and Relative Humidity Monitoring in Usambara Mountains - A review | |
|
12:00-12:10 |
A Weather Forecasting Model for Farmers in Arusha | |
|
12:10-12:20 |
Jaguza Livestock App | |
|
12:20-12:30 |
Air quality monitoring in Uganda | |
|
12:30-12:40 |
Bank At Hause – Factor Xchange | |
|
12:40-14:00 |
Lunch Break | |
|
14:00-14:30 |
Keynote 6: | |
|
14:30-14:50 |
Monitoring economic indicators in Sub-Saharan Africa | |
|
14:50-15:10 |
Price prediction for the agricultural commodities. | |
|
15:10-15:30 |
Prediction Modelling of Academic Performance, a Data Mining Approach | |
|
15:30-15:40 |
Challenges facing data management for community-based education and services programs | |
|
15:40-15:50 |
Radio mining and rapid-deployment speech technology for humanitarian early warning in Uganda | |
|
16:20-17:30 |
Panel Discussion - Opportunities for Collaboration around Africa |
Fieldwork Day 1
Time |
Presentation | |
|---|---|---|
|
10:00-12:30 |
Cow Tracking | |
|
12:30-15:00 |
Chicken Coop |