Inside Indaba: Africa’s AI Party and the Push for Homegrown Innovation

A vibrant evening in Kigali

It’s late August in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, and a large hall fills with people attending one of Africa’s biggest gatherings for AI and machine learning. White curtains drape the room while a giant screen blinks through videos made with generative AI. A classic East African folk song by Tanzanian singer Saida Karoli plays over the speakers.

Friends greet each other as waiters move through the crowd with arrowroot crisps and sugary mocktails. A man and a woman wearing leopard skins atop their clothes sip beer and chat; many women wear handwoven Ethiopian garments embroidered in red, yellow, and green. The atmosphere hums with life and conversation. ‘The best thing about the Indaba is always the parties,’ says computer scientist Nyalleng Moorosi.

Community, culture, and connection

Indaba means ‘gathering’ in Zulu, and Deep Learning Indaba is exactly that: an annual conference where African researchers present their work and the technologies they’ve built. Moorosi, a senior researcher at the Distributed AI Research Institute who traveled from Lesotho, moves through the hall in her signature ‘Mama Africa’ headwrap. Later, a set of Nigerian songs sparks a spontaneous flag-waving moment on stage as attendees from many countries dance and celebrate.

The event is more than social — it’s a place to reconnect with colleagues, meet new collaborators, and celebrate African culture alongside scientific exchange.

Growing scale and broader representation

Deep Learning Indaba began in 2017 with about 300 people in Johannesburg. Since then it has grown into a pan-African movement with local chapters across roughly 50 countries. This year nearly 3,000 people applied to attend and around 1,300 were accepted. While participants still come predominantly from English-speaking African nations, organizers and attendees noted new waves of participants from countries such as Chad, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Sudan.

Opportunities, recruitment, and homegrown ventures

For many attendees, the main prize is professional opportunity: getting hired by a tech company or gaining admission to a PhD program. Organizations present at the Indaba include Microsoft Research’s AI for Good Lab, Google, the Mastercard Foundation, and the Mila–Quebec AI Institute. Moorosi welcomes these connections but stresses the need for more locally founded ventures to create opportunities within Africa.

Policy debates and African priorities

Earlier in the evening a panel on AI policy in Africa brought together experts who urged greater community engagement when crafting national AI strategies. Attendees asked how young Africans could access high-level policy discussions and whether continental strategies were being influenced by outside actors. Moorosi said she wanted to see African priorities reflected in policy-making — items like African Union–backed labor protections, mineral rights, and safeguards against exploitation.

Aspirations for African-built AI

On the last day of the Indaba I asked Moorosi about her hopes for the future of AI on the continent. After a pause she said, ‘I dream of African industries adopting African-built AI products. We really need to show our work to the world.’

Abdullahi Tsanni is a science writer based in Senegal who specializes in narrative features.