Deep Learning Indaba in Kigali 2025

During the week of August 17-22, 2025, two researchers from the Hertie Institute, Kerol Djoumessi and Lisa Schmors, attended the Deep Learning Indaba in Kigali, Rwanda. Established in 2017, the Indaba has grown to become the largest annual machine learning and artificial intelligence conference on the African continent. This year's conference operated under the motto "Urunana," which means "hand in hand" in Kinyarwanda. The theme emphasizes the strength of community and the importance of coming together to collaboratively shape the future of AI, both between African nations and the global community, as well as between industry and academia. The conference also organized specialized workshops covering topics such as "Data Science for Health in Africa," "Robotics," and "TrustAI". The "NeuroAI," workshop explored intersections between neuroscience and artificial intelligence. Lisa was invited as a keynote speaker and panelist at the NeuroAI workshop, presenting her latest research on contrastive learning for neural time series data.

"We really enjoyed the conference and were able to have so many interesting discussions with people from a diversity of countries and research fields."