05 Aug 2026

Deep Learning Indaba 2026 Reflection: Day 3

Image: Moyahabo Rabothata at the Deep Learning Indaba 2026 in Lagos, Nigeria.

Image: Moyahabo Rabothata at the Deep Learning Indaba 2026 in Lagos, Nigeria.

Moyahabo Rabothata, a PhD student supported by the AI4D African Languages Lab, is attending the Deep Learning Indaba 2026 in Lagos, Nigeria. Here is her reflection from Day 3 of the conference.

Day 3 of Deep Learning Indaba was both thought-provoking and inspiring. The day began with a powerful keynote by Dr. Melanie Mitchell, who challenged us to look beyond the hype surrounding Artificial Intelligence. Rather than focusing only on AI’s promise, she examined the realities of how the field is evolving, highlighting how the current AI landscape is increasingly shaped by a small number of powerful organizations. Her talk encouraged us to question whether today’s rapid advances are truly delivering measurable benefits for society or primarily reinforcing existing power and commercial interests. The session was followed by an engaging fireside chat moderated by Raesetje Sefala from the DAIR Institute, which further explored these important conversations around responsible and inclusive AI.

One of the most inspiring moments of the day was celebrating African research excellence through the Alele-Williams Master’s Award and the Kambule Doctoral Award. Congratulations to Akinbobola Adegboyega (Nigeria) for his remarkable work on evaluating machine translation for low-resource tonal languages, placing emotion and cultural meaning at the centre of translation quality. Equally inspiring was Dr. Everlyn Chimoto (Kenya), whose doctoral research is advancing natural language processing for African languages while making AI more accessible under real-world African resource constraints. These achievements are a reminder that world-class AI research is being driven from within Africa and is addressing challenges that matter most to our communities.

A personal highlight of my day was visiting the Mila booth and had the opportunity to catch up with Prof. David Ifeoluwa Adelani to discuss his work on IrokoBench and AfriMGSM. Since my own research focuses on developing a mathematical reasoning benchmark for low-resource South African languages, it was incredibly motivating to engage with someone whose work features so prominently throughout my literature review. Conversations like these remind me why attending conferences like Deep Learning Indaba is so valuable, they create opportunities to learn directly from researchers whose work is shaping the future of African AI which is embodied in this year’s theme “Ìmọ̀ Wa” (our shared knowledge).

My day concluded with the Masakhane Community Dinner at Four Points by Sheraton. The evening opened with a panel discussion on the state of African NLP, reflecting on the journey so far, the challenges facing the AI ecosystem, and the exciting opportunities ahead for African researchers and innovators. It was a fitting end to a day filled with learning, meaningful conversations, and new connections with people who share the vision of building AI that truly serves African communities.

Day 3 reminded me that impactful AI is not only about building more powerful models, it is about building knowledge, communities, and solutions that reflect our languages, cultures, and realities. Every conversation reinforced my belief that the future of African AI will be shaped by researchers who are bold enough to tackle our unique challenges while collaborating to create technologies that leave no language or community behind.

Follow our journey at Deep Learning Indaba 2026 and beyond: