🚀 DSFSI at Deep Learning Indaba 2026: Keynotes, Accepted Papers, Workshops, Tutorials, and Research Showcase

The countdown is officially on for the Deep Learning Indaba 2026 at Pan-Atlantic University in Lagos! As the Data Science for Social Impact (DSFSI) research lab at the University of Pretoria, our mission is to advance AI and Data Science research that directly serves our communities, languages, and sociotechnical contexts.

This year, members and researchers from the DSFSI lab will be represented across the main plenary stage, accepted publication tracks, interactive workshops, hands-on tutorials, poster showcases, and peer-review panels under the conference theme Sovereign Intelligence: Africa’s Path in a Frontier AI World.

Here is where you can find and connect with the DSFSI team during Indaba week!

🎤 Main Plenary Keynote Address

Lab Principal Investigator Prof. Vukosi Marivate will be delivering a main plenary keynote address to the full conference assembly on the critical challenges surrounding AI evaluation in African contexts:

• 📌 Title: “What Do Our Benchmarks Actually Measure? Evaluation Challenges for African Language AI”

• 🗓️ When: Wednesday, 5 August 2026

  09:00 (GMT+1)

• 💡 Overview: Static benchmarks often miss the nuances of low-resource languages. This keynote delves into how we evaluate African language AI models effectively, moving beyond superficial metrics to build truly meaningful socio-technical evaluations.

📄 Accepted Paper (Publication Track)

We are thrilled to share that a paper authored by Prof. Vukosi Marivate has been accepted into the Deep Learning Indaba 2026 Publication Track:

• 📌 Title: “The Annotation Scarcity Paradox in Low-Resource NLP Evaluation: A Decade of Acceleration and Emerging Constraints”
• ✍️ Author: Prof. Vukosi Marivate
• 📄 Preprint: Read the paper on arXiv at arXiv:2605.19066.

🛠️ Workshops & Tutorial by Dr Idris Abdulmumin

Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Affiliate Dr Idris Abdulmumin is co-organising two major workshops and leading a hands-on tutorial focused on community-driven language resources and practical data extraction challenges:

• 🛠️ Full-Day Workshop: Cultivating Sovereign African NLP: A Full Day Workshop on Community Led Data Collection for African Languages
• 🎨 Interactive Workshop: Data, Culture, and Community: An Interactive Exhibition of the AfricaNLP Playbook and Annotation Tool
• 💻 Featured Tutorial: During the second workshop, Dr Abdulmumin will deliver a practical tutorial on Optical Character Recognition (OCR) and Audio Transcription, highlighting the real-world complexities and challenges of extracting usable data from diverse African datasets.

📊 Research Showcase: Poster Presentations

Members of our lab are presenting cutting-edge research at the main Indaba Research Showcase:

🔹 Dr Seani Rananga (Emerging Fellow & IndabaX SA Poster Prize Winner)

• 📌 Focus: Using LLMs to detect misinformation in African languages.
• 💡 Overview: Using COVID-19 misinformation as a pilot study, Dr Rananga demonstrates a framework for detecting language-specific misinformation that can be scaled across healthcare, education, elections, and disaster response.

🔹 Nontokozo Manukuza (MSc Candidate)

• 📌 Poster Title: “Interpreting isiZulu Idiomatic Expressions using Large Language Models”
• 💡 Overview: Figurative language and idioms present a significant challenge for natural language processing. Nontokozo’s research investigates how current Large Language Models handle the nuances and cultural context of isiZulu idiomatic expressions.

⚖️ Academic Leadership & Judging

We are also proud to share that Moyahabo Rabothata (PhD Candidate) will be serving as a Poster Judge at this year’s conference, helping to review, evaluate, and mentor emerging researchers showcasing their work from across the continent.

🤝 Connect with Us! If you are attending #DLI2026 in Lagos, make sure to catch Prof. Marivate’s keynote and paper presentation, drop by Dr Abdulmumin’s workshops and tutorial session, visit Nontokozo and Dr Rananga’s posters during the showcase, and connect with our team.

Follow our updates throughout the week right here on Substack or visit the DSFSI Website to learn more about our ongoing projects!