As a young schoolboy growing up in Cote d’Ivoire, Muhamed was into gaming. After school, while some of his mates preferred to play football in the streets, he would race home to play Nintendo’s Super Mario Bros., overachieving his score each time. This game wasn’t just a pastime for him, as it sparked a deep curiosity and fascination with software development.

“I’d always rush home, do my homework, and in my spare time… I was playing Super Mario Bros,” he said. “Some people may think it was an addiction. But it wasn’t just a game for me. It was me also trying to figure out how it worked.

With that fascination came his aspiration to become a software developer so that one day, he could create his own games. He nurtured this dream as he grew, such that by the time he was in high school, he took a major step by teaching himself Javascript. Before long, he was exploring the foundations of software development with the same fervor he once had playing Super Mario Bros. Still in school, he devoured the versatile, interpreted programming language used to make web pages interactive and dynamic, but also used for server-side development and many other applications.

A Major Shift Happened When he Encountered SIRI

Just like most Africans who use Android phones, Muhamed was used to Android phones until he held his first iPhone. Once introduced to SIRI, Apple’s famous virtual assistant,  Muhamed was hooked by SIRI and how it was able to respond accurately to natural human prompts. This experience changed his interest of focus. His initial dream of building games had given way to a bigger thirst for knowledge- artificial intelligence.

Muhamed wanted to study Computer Science and Mathematics in Abidjan and attended  ESATIC (École Supérieure Africaine des TIC) – https://esatic.ci/. It’s an engineering school, and the first two years are preparatory classes that are highly demanding. Enthralled in his studies he, one day, during a study session with his friend Emmanuel was introduced to Zindi Africa. Then, Zindi was a relatively new platform focused on hosting machine learning competitions for anyone keen to learn about Ai (coding) to proffer unique solutions to real problems. Emmanuel, who was one of the first Zindian in these challenges, is now a Zindi Ambassador.

Muhamed quickly took to the challenge, by registering for one of Zindi’s competitions. With some confidence and a large dose of curiosity, he delved into the screen problems but was not satisfied by his results, as he couldn’t propose solutions like the others. He recalled how the competition left him stumped and humbled him. But he also learned never to give up.

By 2020, during the COVID-19 Pandemic, Muhamed tasked himself with cracking the Zindi code. He poured himself into competitions, aiming to move from the 500th ranking into the top 50. He was set on success and made it on the first page of the 50 firsts.  He continued to participate in more competitions in his spare time while attending classes during an exhausting day of computer science and math. The transformation he underwent was in his ability to solve problems: he wasn’t just cleaning data sets; he was learning crucial skills and preparing for the job of the future. For one, his curiosity about using LLM (for de-masking SIRI) and fully understanding its whole data codes later became a fantastic stepping stone for his current job description, where he uses computer vision to oversee bottlenecks in the telecom sector fibre optics.

Zindi, the tutor

Following his studies, Muhamed was recruited for a high-salaried job in France. Zindi has become his tutor, still participating in LLM competitions and practicing problem-solving in different sectors.

“To this day, I still compete,” he said. “I’m doing the Kenya LLM Clinical Reasoning for Healthcare competition. It has nothing to do with my job, but the overlap in problem-solving keeps my mind sharp. The experience is so rich. It gives me an edge because some of these issues in LLM are parallel to computer vision. Learning new patterns of solving problems helps me be a better problem solver. I’ve reached 3rd best on Zindi among thousands of competitors and currently ranked 7th on the platform.”

He also credits Zindi with setting him apart in job interviews and actually getting the jobs. In his words, “If it wasn’t for Zindi, I would not be where I am today. What made me unique in all the job interviews was my experience with Zindi competitions. This is what a recruiter has personally told me. During these competitions, we work on real-life problems with real datasets to solve complex problems. So, during the interview, I demonstrated that I knew how to identify a strategy, make a plan based on different scenarios, and solve problems accordingly, decrypting complex data.”

Now a Role Model and Good Ambassador for Data Science These days, Muhamed is encouraging more data enthusiasts to “jump into it” instead of waiting until they feel fully ready. He believes that the opportunities in data science are endless because “from data, you can create anything.” He also recommends taking advantage of the unprecedented learning opportunities offered by Zindi competitions.

Send us your news/press releases to [email protected]