Workshops

The Deep Learning Indaba (DLI) is the annual gathering of Africa’s machine learning (ML) and AI community, dedicated to strengthening and celebrating African AI. In 2025, the DLI will be held in Kigali, Rwanda at the University of Rwanda from 17 to 22 August 2025. The event will include keynotes, tutorials, workshops, panels, and paper presentations.

This year we have an exciting line-up of 12 workshops, split over two days, with six ‘full-day’ workshops on 21 August, and six ‘half-day’ workshops on 22 August.

The line-up for August 21 is:

TrustAI Workshop: Building Public Awareness and Engagement
AI for Business and Finance in Africa: Challenges and Innovations
3rd Workshop on Robotics and Automation in Africa
AI for a Climate-Resilient Africa
Centring Data in African AI
Data Science for Health in Africa workshop 2025 (DS4Health Africa workshop)

The line-up for August 22 is:

Human-AI Interaction in the Global Majority
Quantum Machine Learning for Africa (QML4Africa)
Responsible AI: from Africa to the World
The NeuroAI Workshop at the Deep Learning Indaba 2025
Voices of Africa Vol. 2: Advancing innovations for African NLP
The Compute Workshop

Detailed information for each workshop can be found below.

Full-Day Workshops – 21 August

TrustAI Workshop: Building Public Awareness and Engagement

Abstract: Trustworthy AI seeks to ensure that AI systems are aligned with ethical principles, particularly in their societal impact. Given the unique historical and structural challenges of the African continent, it is vital that AI systems are developed to be culturally and ethically relevant, reflecting the continent’s diverse values, and effectively addressing its specific challenges in sectors like healthcare, agriculture, and finance. This full-day workshop offers a platform for researchers to learn, discuss, and engage with the challenges of developing and deploying trustworthy AI systems—especially for and within Africa. This year, the focus is on “Building Public Awareness and Engagement”. By bringing together researchers, ML practitioners, and stakeholders, we aim to strengthen the ecosystem for African-centered trustworthy AI. Through this platform, we hope to inspire initiatives that ensure AI development in Africa is trustworthy, inclusive, and impactful, benefiting marginalized communities and fostering a more diverse, culturally relevant global AI landscape.

AI for Business and Finance in Africa: Challenges and Innovations

Abstract: This workshop explores the intersection of artificial intelligence with business and financial sectors across Africa, focusing on developing and implementing AI solutions that respond to unique regional challenges. Through talks and collaborative discussions with industry and academic leaders, participants will investigate cutting-edge AI technologies and culturally-aware approaches adapted for African markets. The workshop connects researchers and industry practitioners to bridge the gap between theoretical advances and practical implementation, while ensuring ethical and equitable AI deployment that benefits diverse African communities.

3rd Workshop on Robotics and Automation in Africa

Abstract: Now in its third edition, the Robotics and Automation in Africa workshop aims to advance robotics and machine learning research across the continent by fostering a community of students, researchers, and professionals dedicated to tackling Africa’s most pressing challenges. Building on the success of previous events, this year’s workshop expands its scope to encompass automation—acknowledging its practical application of theoretical robotics principles to tangible, real-world applications in sectors such as agriculture, healthcare, energy, and manufacturing. Through interactive sessions, panel discussions, and hands-on demonstrations, participants will explore how best to harness these technologies to increase efficiency and drive sustainable development throughout Africa.

AI for a Climate-Resilient Africa

Centring Data in African AI

Abstract: Over the past year, data moats have received significant attention, as data is increasingly viewed as a differentiator in AI development. This should be unsurprising – data is central to deep learning. Despite this, research on data in AI often receives far less attention than work on algorithms and architectures. For the African AI community, research on data and the broader AI data ecosystem are particularly important. On the one hand, data for African contexts is often scarce, expensive to create and difficult to access. This necessitates technical innovations in dataset development, model training and evaluation. On the other hand, data collection, governance, and ownership present several socio-technical challenges, including tensions between inclusion and appropriation, sovereignty and cultural erasure, as well as participation and control.

This workshop, Centring Data in African AI, explores the challenges and opportunities of data in African AI from technical and socio-technical perspectives. Key technical topics include dataset measurement, fit-for-purpose evaluation data, small model development, and model customisation and personalisation. Relevant socio-technical topics include, but are not limited to, participation and inclusion, representation and autonomy, compensation and control, licensing, data sharing, and the role of human labour in data work.

Data Science for Health in Africa workshop 2025 (DS4Health Africa workshop)

Abstract: In recent years, healthcare has undergone significant transformations, largely driven by advancements in data science and deep learning. However, these innovations have yet to be fully integrated into Africa’s healthcare sector, primarily due to unique regional challenges. Recognizing the urgent need to bridge this gap and empower stakeholders within Africa’s healthcare ecosystem, we propose a workshop focused on leveraging data science and deep learning techniques to improve healthcare outcomes across the continent.This interdisciplinary workshop will bring together researchers, practitioners, and healthcare professionals to explore the transformative potential of data science and deep learning in African healthcare. It will serve as a platform for diverse discussions spanning topics such as data science, medical image analysis, health informatics, and deep learning. The workshop will also feature a range of speakers, including academic researchers and healthcare industry practitioners, alongside representatives from communities like DSI-Africa, Ro’ya Africa, and SisonkeBiotik. Through presentations, panel discussions, and interactive sessions, participants will delve into the challenges and opportunities of applying data science and deep learning to the African healthcare context. Key focus areas will include early disease detection, prevention, clinical and computational resource allocation, and improving accessibility. By fostering knowledge exchange and collaboration, the workshop aims to deepen participants’ understanding of these challenges and opportunities, paving the way for future research and initiatives that can drive meaningful improvements in healthcare delivery across Africa. Building on the success and insights from our previous Indaba workshops, this event will emphasize integrating real-world clinical scenarios and adopting innovative engagement strategies that offer participants practical, hands-on experiences. Additionally, this year’s refined approach addresses key feedback from past participants, particularly the demand for more in-depth technical content and stronger industry partnerships.

Half-Day Workshops – 22 August

Human-AI Interaction in the Global Majority

Abstract: How is AI being used by the global majority, how are AI tools evolving based on user needs and how are workflows changing/impacted as a result of AI system deployment? Human-AI collaboration for the global majority requires meeting people where they are to integrate AI into existing workflows while ensuring accessibility, agency, and responsible use. This workshop will (1) capture the breadth of deployed applications of AI on the continent and (2) discuss patterns for collaboration alongside AI covering the importance of interface design and of algorithms that account for downstream use. We aim to promote new paradigms and evaluation protocols to advance the state of the art in human-AI collaboration for such open-ended complex tasks where, oftentimes, there is no structured ground-truth output.

Quantum Machine Learning for Africa (QML4Africa)

Abstract: Quantum machine learning (QML) is an exciting new field of study which harnesses the laws of quantum mechanics and applies it to classical machine learning models. QML has a wide variety of potential applications spanning many fields which include healthcare and life sciences, climate and sustainability, finance and optimization. Two parallel activities have emerged to pioneer the field of quantum discoveries: one is the technological advancements required (hardware, software and algorithms) and the other is the rapid exploration of domain-specific problems towards identifying quantum advantage over classical methods. In this workshop, we will provide the participants with an introduction to QML from a theoretical perspective, as well as a practical implementation of the Qiskit programming SDK. Thereafter, we will explore the application of quantum machine learning for a cancer-based classification task using histopathology images and discuss the need for integrated workflows with high performance computing infrastructures.

Responsible AI: from Africa to the World

Abstract: The grassroots AI research conducted across Africa, supported by Deep Learning Indaba, changes the rules of the game in global AI research. While AI research efforts in the Global North tend to focus on the publication of academic papers and the increase of productivity, the AI research trajectory in the continent is contributing to both fundamental AI state of the art and the needs of local communities. This is partly due to the community-based engagements focusing on specific research areas such as NLP, Computer Vision, Geospatial ML. However, there is a gap where the research outputs from the continent are not warmly welcomed at global scientific venues. There are growing efforts to address the gap, such as special issues and hosting top AI conferences in the continent, e.g., ICLR 2023 and MICCAI 2024. This workshop aims to generate a discussion and build bridges between the unique AI research agenda across Africa and the international AI key stakeholders, to learn about Responsible AI from Africa to the world.

The NeuroAI Workshop at the Deep Learning Indaba 2025

Abstract: Computational neuroscience seeks to understand brain function through mathematical models and simulations. In the rapidly evolving field of artificial intelligence (AI), the integration of computational neuroscience and machine learning presents a frontier rich with potential for groundbreaking advancements. Artificial intelligence can help us deepen our understanding of the brain and by examining how the brain processes information. Therefore we can develop more robust and efficient AI systems based on how the brain works. Despite the significant contributions of computational neuroscience to understanding the brain and behaviour, Africa contributes less than 2% to global computational neuroscience research. The NeuroAI workshop aims to explore the interest in computational neuroscience in the African AI community, including both students and professionals, through the Deep Learning Indaba (DLI). The workshop will review various topics at the intersection of neuroscience and AI, including the cognitive foundation of learning algorithms, emphasising neural representations and biologically plausible learning systems, and AI’s application in decoding and analysing neuroscience data. After organizing the first workshop at DLI 2024, many participants expressed a strong interest in the field and a desire to deepen their knowledge and skills. Additionally, we received feedback from several attendees who were eager to access materials that would help them build a solid foundation in this area. We are optimistic that a second edition of the NeuroAI workshop will build on our previous progress by continuing to sow the seeds of interest and establish the burgeoning field of NeuroAI within the DLI community and Africa as a whole. It will also allow NeuroAI researchers to share their work with people with similar interests. Through a series of talks and interactive sessions from experts in computational neuroscience, the workshop aims to encourage participants to investigate how these two fields can complement each other. The NeuroAI workshop will spark international collaborations to ensure that the global south is not excluded from groundbreaking applications of AI ranging from basic neuroscience research to the development of neurotechnologies and neural interfaces that will mark future decades.

Voices of Africa Vol. 2: Advancing innovations for African NLP

Abstract: African Natural Language Processing (NLP) has made significant strides in recent years, and new initiatives are already underway to shape the next steps of African NLP while the technology itself is changing rapidly. At the same, key challenges remain: The vast majority of African languages still don’t have models ready for practical applications, resources for compute and data collection while rising remain insufficient and key questions on how to balance opportunities and risks are still open. Against this backdrop and building on last year’s workshop, this workshop will bring together researchers, practitioners, and innovators to assess the current state of African NLP in 2025, explore innovative solutions to common challenges, and foster collaboration and learning to drive the future of African NLP.

The Compute Workshop

Abstract: As we step into 2025, a year marked by a global emphasis on emerging strategies in computing, this workshop aligns with international priorities to build a resilient and inclusive technological future with a focus on Africa. It aims to explore cutting-edge computing technologies and their applications to advance AI and ML research in Africa. In this workshop, we will cover a wide range of topics; high-performance computing, quantum computing, green computing, neuromorphic computing, medical computing (federated learning), in-memory computing, and safe computing (cybersecurity). Through a blend of expert talks, interactive panels, and hands-on tutorials, participants will gain insights into leveraging advanced computing resources and methods for local and global challenges. The workshop seeks to foster collaboration, share knowledge, and equip participants with the skills and resources they need to drive innovation in Africa.