Pierrette Mahoro Mastel currently works at GIZ as a Digital Health Advisor, prior to that she was at CMU-Africa where she did her Masters in IT with a major in Machine Learning. Mastel is the IndabaX Rwanda lead and one of the 2025 General Chairs for the Indaba to be held in Kigali 17-22 August 2025.
I first attended the Annual Deep Learning Indaba in 2022 with two of my other CMU Africa colleagues. I still remember several people’s surprised faces when I would say that I’m from Rwanda. I kept asking why and they all said the same thing; it was their first time meeting a Rwandan at the Indaba. There was one other Rwandan from University of Oxford that year, and those who knew him made sure to introduce us. Honestly, it was a little embarrassing. Here I was at the largest gathering of AI practitioners on the continent—and yet Rwandan representation was virtually nonexistent. I felt inspired to change that.
Rwanda’s AI/ML community began taking shape around 2018-2019 when African Institute of Mathematical Sciences Rwanda (AIMS) students organised the first IndabaX Rwanda in 2019. Around the same time, CMU-Africa alum launched AI Saturdays Kigali. However, these early efforts lost momentum when the AI Saturdays founder left the country, and the COVID-19 pandemic brought IndabaX Rwanda to a halt. The community started gaining traction again with the creation of MBAZA NLP in 2021.
Towards the end of the 2022 Indaba, I was then asked by one of the Indaba organisers to reinitiate IndabaX Rwanda. We held our first IndabaX the following year, which was co-located with ICLR and we had over 100 attendees. Most were international participants already in Kigali for ICLR, rather than members of our local community—but it was a start.
With the presence of CMU-Africa, AI Saturdays Kigali, the growth of Mbaza NLP, and eventually the establishment of IndabaX Rwanda, the machine learning and AI community in Rwanda steadily began to grow. That growth was clearly visible in 2023—from just me attending the Indaba in 2022, to six Rwandans and more than ten others from our local community participating the following year.
In 2024, we hosted a two-day IndabaX Rwanda that drew over 150 attendees. What excited me most wasn’t just the increase in numbers, but the quality of the research, the projects, the conversations being showcased. The maturity was quite apparent. Fast forward to 2025, Rwanda is hosting the Annual Deep Learning Indaba. And while grassroots communities alone didn’t get us here, they laid much of the foundation. Rwanda’s progressive visa policies and its strong Meetings,Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions (MICE) sector also played a critical role in making this possible.
Day one of the 2024 IndabaX Rwanda at Norrsken House Kigali
It’s no surprise that grassroots organisations such as Mbaza NLP, the Deep Learning Indaba, Masakhane, and Data Science Africa have played and continue to play a major role in shaping Africa’s local AI/ML ecosystems. For over a decade, these communities have been at the forefront of ensuring that Africans are not just bystanders or consumers in the global AI movement, but active contributors, researchers, and builders. While many governments are only now beginning to draft their National AI Strategies, these communities have already laid the groundwork. And while it’s encouraging to see countries across Africa taking serious steps towards advancing AI—drafting national strategies, setting policies, and organising high-level events such as the Global AI Summit on Africa to fund AI efforts on the continent — my hope is that we don’t take as long to recognise who is best positioned to implement these strategies. Grassroots organisations should be at the forefront for funding and support. They have a proven track record: building talent pipelines, driving community-led research, and creating inclusive platforms for African voices in AI. If we want these national strategies to translate into real, sustainable impact, then the implementers must be those who have already shown they can do the work—and have been doing it long before it was on anyone’s policy agenda.
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