This October, InstaDeep and IEEE Sup’Com SB co-hosted the second annual IndabaX Tunisia, one of several IndabaX events happening across Africa in 2021. Organised in a novel hybrid format, the multiple presentations were watched by more than 300 attendees both online and in small groups in person across the country, continuing the momentum for AI and ML on the continent.
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The welcome speech was delivered by Imen Mahdi, Chair of IEEE Sup’Com SB; and was immediately followed up with an engaging and informative joint presentation on “Building the Future with AI” from InstaDeep co-founders Karim Beguir and Zohra Slim. Their session covered a wide range of subjects, anecdotes and tips, and generated several thoughtful follow up questions and comments from the audience during and after the presentation.
Other presentations from InstaDeep experts included a useful and informal roundtable for career-seekers on “how to join an AI-centric company”, with great advice and information provided by the company’s Senior Product Lead in Engineering, Dr Sinda Ben Salem; plus a practical workshop on “Understanding the Language of Proteins with Deep Learning”, from InstaDeep’s Marie Lopez (bio-engineer), Mohamed Mounir Moussa and Ibtissem Kadri (computer vision engineers).
Hackathon Success
IndabaX Tunisia also ran two hackathons:, a guided beginner session and an advanced competition, both hosted on the renowned Africa-based data science competition platform Zindi, and winner and runner up prizes supplied by event sponsor GIZ.
The advanced competition ran for 42 hours and attracted many participanting teams and individuals. The competition was started by InstaDeep AI engineer, Zindi ambassador and former Zindi prizewinner, Mohamed Jedidi, and focused on “Makerere Passion Fruit Disease Detection”. Participants were asked to classify the disease status of a plant given an image of a passion fruit, and the successful model would be deployed as part of a device to aid smallholder farmers in making a prompt diagnosis in their passion fruit crops.
Congratulations to our winners!:
- First prize (4000 dt gift card): Individual entry – Seif Eddine Fazzeni
- Second prize (2500 dt gift card): Team entry – “LMrab3in GhirDraj” (Azer Ksouri, Mokhtar Mami, Nacir Bouazizi).
- Third prize (1500 dt gift card): Team entry – “AOG AVENGERS” (Ala Eddine Hamdi, Omar Hammemi, Ghassen Alaya).
Summary
The whole event was very warmly received by the country-wide audience, with Imen Mahdi commenting that she had “really wanted to organize an event that included everyone from the Tunisian AI and machine learning community”; and InstaDeep’s Communications Officer and IndabaX Tunisia organising committee member, Sabrine Ben Ali, saying she felt the event “re-ignited the passion for AI and ML events in Tunisia after the enforced break in 2020”.
Karim, Zohra and the whole InstaDeep team commends and thanks everyone involved in the organisation, production and execution of IndabaX Tunisia 2021 for such a successful and well-run event and look forward to 2022!
