Useful links 

  • Register your interest to compete – CLOSED
  • Apply here – OPEN until Tueaday 05/09/2023 – 12:00 PM (noon) Accra time
  • Sign-up as a mentor, judge or reviewer – CLOSED 

Important dates

  • Sign-up as a mentor, judge or reviewer: Open 
  • Register your interest: Open
  • Application start: 25/08
  • Application closes: 05/09 – 12:00 pm (noon – GMT)
  • Pre-selected projects notification: 05/09 – 10:00 PM (GMT) 
  • Mentorship sessions: 06/09 – 2:00-4:00 PM (GMT) 
  • Pitches: 07/09 – 8:30-10:00 PM (GMT)
    • Slides will be collected during the Ideathon kick-off – 4:30-6:00 PM (GMT)
  • Winners announcement: 09/09 – During the closing ceremony 

The DLI Ideathon 2023 

At this year’s Indaba we will have a second edition of the Ideathon! The Ideathon is a competition where candidates propose research or application projects, with the following constraints: 

  • It needs to include a machine/deep learning component. This component does not need to be at the core of the project. 
  • It needs to include researchers from at least one African country. International collaborators are welcomed as long as at least one member of the team is based on the continent. The competition is a wonderful opportunity to expand your network, and we therefore strongly recommend you to look for partners from other countries and outside your usual circles. 

This year’s edition will differ from the previous in two major aspects: 

  • In order to encourage research ideas, we will have 2 tracks, for research and application projects. We will also soften the requirement on the participants’ countries. We would still require at least one participant in each group to be based in Africa, but change the requirement for cross-country collaborations to a recommendation. 
  • In order to give more time for project pitching, we will be preselecting a number of projects from the submitted  proposals.

Similarly to last year, participants and winners will receive support to refine and progress on their project: 

  • Preselected teams will receive mentorship during the event to refine their ideas and pitches. 
  • Winners will receive compute credits from the Google CURe programme, and will be offered mentorship (subject to availability of mentors that align with their project topic). 

In order to make this happen, we need volunteers to mentor the competing team and sit on the jury during the pitching session. As we expect a larger number of projects in this new version, we are also looking for reviewers to preselect the teams that will continue to the pitching phase. We look for people from various backgrounds, from research to business building, and different levels of expertise. If you are interested, do not intend to compete and think you can be helpful to our contestants, please sign up through this form. Please keep in mind that mentoring and judging require in-person participation at the Indaba, while reviewing can be done remotely. More details on the different roles are also provided in the linked form. 

If you are interested in taking part in this adventure, please register your interest here so we can add you to a Slack channel where you can already connect and discuss your ideas with other attendees.  More details will be shared over the next few days, so be on the lookout for future announcements!