Data Science Africa 2019
Accra, Ghana (21st - 25th October, 2019)
The last few years have witnessed an explosion in the quantity and variety of data available in Africa, produced either as a by-product of digital services, from sensors or measuring devices, satellites and from many other sources. A number of practical fields have been transformed by the ability to collect large volumes of data: for example, bioinformatics with the development of high throughput sequencing technology capable of measuring gene expression in cells, or agriculture with the widespread availability of high quality remote sensing data. For other data sources – such as mobile phone usage records from telecoms operators, which can be used to measure population movement and economic activity – we are just beginning to understand the practical possibilities.
Data science seeks to exploit advances in machine learning and statistics to make sense of the growing amounts of data available from various sources. In Africa, a number of problems in areas such as healthcare, agriculture, disaster response and wildlife conservation would benefit greatly if domain experts were exposed to data science techniques. These skills would allow practitioners to extract useful information from these abundant sources of raw data
DSA 2019 Addis tentative speakers and instructors include:
In the tradition of previous Africa Data Science workshops, a summer school on machine learning and data science will be held prior to the main workshop. This summer school will target graduate students, researchers and professionals working with huge amounts of data or unique datasets.
The summer school will focus on introductory and advanced lectures in data science and machine learning as well as moderate to advanced practical and tutorial sessions where participants will get their hands wet wrangling and munging datasets and applying cutting edge machine learning techniques to derive inference from the data. Lectures will be given by distinguished world renown researchers and practitioners including researchers from Sheffield University, Amazon, Swansea University Medical School, Facebook, Pulse Lab Kampala, the AI and Data Science (AIR) lab-Makerere University, ARM and Dedan Kimathi University of Technology (DeKUT).
The school will also involve end-to-end tutorial sessions from professionals walking the participants through a real data analytics problem from data acquisition to data presentation.
Stuff to install..
To ensure we hit the ground running, it is essential you install the prerequiste software and test it out and make sure it is working on your computer. The venue for the summer school will have some computers on which the software will have been installed but you are advised to come with your own laptop with the software installed.
Anaconda
Luckily all the software required has already been prepackaged in a bundle called Anaconda. You can download the various versions of the software for your laptop OS and architecture from the Anaconda website. Please download the Python 3.6 version. Instructions on how to install are next to the download links on the Anaconda website.
Stuff to do..
To ensure that the software is working fine on your machine and to get you up and running, download the following jupyter notebook (right click and ‘save as’) and do the exercises in there. To access it you’ll need to run a jupyter notebook (instructions).
Troubleshooting and comments..
Use the comment section below to (a) ask questions that are not already answered (b) help your peers by providing answers to their questions, if you can.
Summer School Day 1
The first day of the data science school will introduce the jupyter notebook and overview the use of python for analyzing data. We will introduce the machine learning technique of classification and perform lab practicals exploring these techniques as well as introduce the fundamentals of IoT.
Time |
Activity |
Material |
|---|---|---|
08:00-08:30 |
Arrival and Registration |
|
08:30-09:00 |
Opening Remarks |
|
09:00-10:00 |
Introduction to Machine Learning |
|
10:00-10:30 |
Tea Break |
|
10:30-11:30 |
Python, Pandas and Jupyter Tutorial - with Practical Session |
|
11:30-12:30 |
Data Visualisation with Practical Session |
|
12:30-13:30 |
Lunch |
|
13:30-15:30 |
Fundamentals of IoT - with Practical Session |
|
15:30-16:00 |
Tea Break |
|
16:00-17:30 |
ML at the edge |
|
17:30-19:00 |
Labs |
Summer School Day 2
The second day will feature two tracks dealing deep learning methods, mechanism design techniques and DisARM Project
Time |
Activity |
Material |
|---|---|---|
09:00-10:30 |
Introduction to Deep Learning - with Practical Session on Computer Vision |
|
10:30-11:00 |
Tea Break |
|
11:00-12:00 |
Image Representation and fine-grained recognition - with practical session |
|
12:00-13:00 |
Lunch Break |
|
13:00-14:00 |
Mechanism Design |
|
14:00-15:30 |
Natural Language Processing |
|
15:30-16:00 |
Tea Break |
|
16:00-17:00 |
Cyber Security |
|
17:00-18:30 |
Labs |
Summer School Day 3
Time |
Activity |
Material |
|---|---|---|
09:00-10:30 |
Introduction to Non parametric modelling with Gaussian Processes |
|
10:30-11:00 |
Tea Break |
|
11:00-12:30 |
Introduction to Reinforcement Learning |
|
11:00-12:00 |
Lunch Break |
|
12:00-13:30 |
Data for good presentation |
|
13:30-14:30 |
Electrical grid mapping tutorial |
|
14:30-15:00 |
Tea Break |
|
15:00-16:30 |
Research Clinic (Q&A for researchers), Feedback |
Theme
End to End Data ScienceCall for Registration
The workshop will be organized around paper presentations and interactive panel discussions. We invite participants interested in presenting work at the workshop to submit a short abstract describing the application of data science methods to problems relevant to Africa. These may include, for example, the following areas:
- Data Science for the Sustainable Development Goals
- Healthcare
- Agriculture
- Wildlife conservation
- Disaster response
- Geospatial modelling
- Telecommunications data modelling
- Economic monitoring
During the panel discussions, we will unite a wide range of stakeholders, including data scientists, representatives from government, development practitioners and the private sector; this will provide a unique setting in which innovative solution driven ideas can thrive.
Participants will also develop a framework for attracting young African talent, mentors and researchers from academia, the public sector and the private sector in Africa to engage in activities geared towards harnessing big data and real-time analytics for the public good.
Workshop programme outline:
Workshop Day 1
Time |
Presentation |
|
|---|---|---|
08:00-09:00 |
Arrival and Registration |
|
09:00-09:10 |
Welcome remarks |
|
09:10-09:30 |
Opening remarks |
|
09:30-10:15 |
Keynote 1- End-to-end Data Science |
|
10:15-10:25 |
Breaking Cultural Stigma using A.I. |
|
10:25-10:35 |
Astronomy in Africa |
|
10:35-10:45 |
Predictive Model for Survival of Paediatric Sickle Cell Anemia Patients using Data Mining Technique |
|
10:45-10:55 |
Use of machine learning techniques for alternative energy sources |
|
11:00-11:30 |
Teak Break |
|
11:30-12:15 |
Keynote 2 - Digital Data and Health |
|
12:15-13:15 |
AI and Psychometrics |
|
13:15-13:30 |
Learnings from the Computer Vision for Global Challenges (CV4GC) initiative |
|
13:30-14:30 |
Lunch |
|
14:30-15:15 |
Keynote 3 - Innovation to Deployment: Machine Learning System Design |
|
15:15-15:25 |
Cocoanet - Cocoa Disease Detection |
|
15:25-15:35 |
UriSAF, Machine Learning-driven diagnosis of Uterine Tract Infections |
|
15:35-15:45 |
Medical Big Data Analytics - An Artificial Intelligence Approach |
|
15:45-15:55 |
Natural Language data collection |
|
16:00-16:30 |
Break |
|
16:30-17:15 |
Keynote 4 - IoT Deployments for Ecosystem Monitoring |
|
17:15-18:00 |
DisARM Project |
|
18:00-19:00 |
Dinner |
Workshop Day 2
Time |
Presentation |
|
|---|---|---|
08:00-09:00 |
Arrival and Registration |
|
09:00-09:45 |
Keynote 5 - Counting Buildings in Satellite Imagery |
|
09:45-10:00 |
Mapping Croplands in Uganda with Computer Vision |
|
10:00-10:30 |
Social media in Africa - Situation Analysis |
|
10:30-11:00 |
Eliciting Machine Learning Metrics |
|
11:00-11:30 |
Break |
|
11:30-12:15 |
Keynote 6 - Growth Data Science |
|
12:15-12:45 |
Global Challenges in Mechanism Design |
|
12:45-13:00 |
Bi-directional Matching and Hierarchical Attention based Subjective Question Marking using Deep Learning |
|
12:45-14:00 |
Lunch |
|
14:00-14:45 |
Keynote 7 - Global Pulse Labs |
|
14:45-15:45 |
Panel Session: AI Ethics |
|
15:45-16:00 |
minoHealth AI Labs |
|
16:00-16:30 |
Break |
|
16:30-17:15 |
Keynote 8: Communicating Data Science Research to Policy Makers |
|
17:15-18:00 |
Closing Remarks |
Collaborators
Sponsorship
Gold Sponsors
Silver Sponsors
Bronze Sponsors
Sponsoring Data Science Africa 2019 Event is a great way to communicate your commitment to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals. To become a sponsor, please contact Data Science Africa at info@datascienceafrica.org