💬 “We can’t compare someone who has a data science degree from a top university in the US to someone in Nigeria getting their data science degree without consistent electricity. Data Scientists in Africa have different insights to problem solving and when they bring these to a company, to a job, to a team, it’s incredibly valuable.” @Celina Lee

This is a conversation with Celina Lee

🎙️ Celina is the Co-Founder and CEO of Zindi, based out of Cape Town in South Africa, Zindi data science competition platform, dedicated to solving Africa’s most pressing problems by bringing together a community of data scientists who collaborate and compete to come up with the best possible solutions.

🎧 In this episode, Celina and I talk about Data Science and AI projects in Africa. We discuss the unique perspectives that Data Scientists have across the continent and we explore her business Zindi in detail. I’m fascinated by open innovation and by the ways to crowdsource ideas and harness external independent individuals to solve problems. This is for two reasons, the first is that I think more companies will succeed in innovating when they can learn how to fluently access and harness crowd wisdom and because when companies do this, their perspectives will be broader and their biases illuminated and potentially neutralised. Celina is passionate about her work, which actually extends to many countries around the world that contribute to her platform. She has over a thousand data scientists that compete in competitions to solve AI problems. They have a real-time leaderboard for each project to see who is making progress, and to succeed, data scientists team up and collaborate from all over the world. Perhaps with Zindi we are getting a glimpse into the future of work.