COTONOU, Benin, 27 July – Benin has completed the first phase of its National Olympiad for Artificial Intelligence (NOAI), using an AI competition hosted on the Zindi platform to attract, assess, and develop young talent as part of the country’s preparation for the International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence (IOAI) which will take place 2-8 August in Astana, Republic of Kazakhstan.
The initiative aims to strengthen the country’s pipeline of young AI talent by introducing students to practical applications of artificial intelligence and selecting high-potential participants for further training.
The first phase, hosted on Zindi’s platform which took place in April, challenged participants to build AI models capable of identifying roads in satellite images. The competition attracted more than 400 student participants taking part in the challenge.
The practical challenge introduced participants to computer vision and machine learning while tackling a real-world problem with applications in mapping, infrastructure planning and public service delivery. Computer vision is a critical field in artificial intelligence research and applications, particularly in low-resource settings where it can extend services at scale, cutting the cost and time of tasks like infrastructure mapping that would otherwise require manual, on-the-ground surveying. By automating the detection of roads, buildings and other features from satellite imagery, governments and organisations can plan and deliver public services more efficiently, impacting communities that traditional data collection methods often miss.
The strongest participants have advanced to subsequent stages of the National AI Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence, receiving training in areas including machine learning, deep learning, computer vision, natural language processing and robotics. The programme will ultimately select the top students to represent Benin at the upcoming International Olympiad in Artificial Intelligence.
The initiative forms part of Benin’s broader national strategy to develop digital skills and build a new generation of AI practitioners capable of contributing to the country’s technological and economic development.
“Our ambition is clear: to make Benin a leading African reference for artificial intelligence education,” said Mahuna Akplogan , Minister of Digital Transformation and Innovation and head of the country’s national AI strategy, in a statement issued to mark the launch of the competition.
Zindi CEO Celina Lee said Zindi is committed to create top level competitions as an effective way to give young people a chance to demonstrate African AI talent.
“Over the past eight years, Zindi has built Africa’s largest AI and data science community with more than 120,000 practitioners across 180 countries, competing to solve real-world problems, with over $1.5 million paid in prize,” Celina said. “Our expertise is in running over 500 AI competitions on the Zindi platform. A talented workforce needs the right platform. And this is what we built for Benin’s National AI Olympiad. We are excited to see the students compete with the best in the world at IOAI. Watch out! Benin has a serious roster of African AI talent.”
About Zindi
Founded in 2018, Zindi is Africa’s largest professional network for AI and data science, with a community of more than 120,000 registered users across more than 180 countries. Zindi has run over 500 competitions and awarded more than $1.5 million in cash prizes, partnering with governments, NGOs and private-sector organisations to solve real-world problems while building a pipeline of data science and AI talent across the continent.
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