Awards

Celebrating Excellence in African Machine Learning

Cheikh Anta Diop Early to Mid Career Award 

Recognizing excellence in research, teaching and community service by early to mid-career academics and researchers at African universities, in any area of artificial intelligence, and computational and statistical sciences.

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  • Application deadline: 10 May 2026 
  • Shortlist selection: June 2026
  • The award will be presented at the annual Deep Learning Indaba in August 2026.

Honoring Visionary Change-Makers

The Anta Diop Award recognises and encourages excellence in research, teaching and community service by early to mid-career academics and researchers at African universities, in any area of artificial intelligence, and computational and statistical sciences.

The Anta Diop Award celebrates African research excellence: its recipients are those that uphold Cheikh Anta Diop’s legacy as a multidisciplinary scientist and visionary intellectual.

The award will be presented at the annual Deep Learning Indaba in August 2026. We welcome applications from faculty members themselves, or nominations from their colleagues, mentors, or department heads.

Eligibility Criteria

Who Can Apply?

  • There is no age limit for applications or nomination to be eligible. 
  • Applicants or nominations must have obtained a doctoral degree from any recognised higher education institution (worldwide) after the 1st of January 2015 and before 31 December 2020.
  • Be affiliated at a research or higher education institution in an African country, and continue to do so for the foreseeable future. Nominees can hold any rank within the university, including postdoctoral fellows, research fellows, lecturers, up to professors and named chairs.
  • An applicant may self-nominate or be nominated by others (for example, colleagues, collaborators, a department chair or head of department) 
  • Nominations or submissions are welcome from any African country. 
  • The nomination or submission can be in any language. For those written in other languages, the Awards Committee may require English translations based on the availability of reviewers. 
  • Supporting letters and reports can be in any language, but we ask that English translations are applied for those written in other languages.
  • A PDF of three most recent sample publications must be included.

The applicant or nominee must show outstanding contribution in the following areas. Please submit a maximum of 3 pages outlining the below.

  • Community: demonstrating the ability to support the broader African AI community and ideally, the DeepLearning Indaba Community, in particular.  
  • Teaching: provide a teaching portfolio demonstrating how their research informs their teaching.
  • Vision: provide a personal statement outlining their vision for the future of AI in Africa. 
  • Research: the applicant or nominee must demonstrate impactful work and research excellence in the broad areas of computational and statistical sciences. This includes, but is not restricted to: machine learning, deep learning, artificial intelligence, statistics, probability, data science, information theory, econometrics, optimisation, statistical physics, biostatistics and bioinformatics, natural language processing, computer vision, computational neuroscience and computational data science.

Selection Criteria

Evaluating the Impact of Nominations

Nominations will be reviewed for technical depth and significance of the research impact, teaching portfolio, community engagement, potential impact on theory and practice, quality of presentation, the ability to support and uphold the legacy of Cheikh Anta Diop, and the applicant’s/nominee’s future vision in strengthening African machine learning.

awards@deeplearningindaba.com

For further questions, email us at this address.