DSFSI at Deep Learning Indaba 2026: Team Reflections from Lagos
Over the course of Deep Learning Indaba 2026 in Lagos, Nigeria, four members of the DSFSI team shared their day-by-day reflections from the conference — from the opening keynotes to the closing workshop sessions. Together, their notes trace the arc of the week: big-picture keynotes on African AI evaluation and GeoAI, award-winning research from across the continent, poster presentations of our own team’s work, and hands-on workshops building the data infrastructure African NLP still needs.
Over the course of Deep Learning Indaba 2026 in Lagos, Nigeria, four members of the DSFSI team shared their day-by-day reflections from the conference — from the opening keynotes to the closing workshop sessions. Together, their notes trace the arc of the week: big-picture keynotes on African AI evaluation and GeoAI, award-winning research from across the continent, poster presentations of our own team’s work, and hands-on workshops building the data infrastructure African NLP still needs.
Here’s a quick round-up, with links to each full reflection.
Days 1 & 2 — Settling In and Setting the Tone
Nontokozo Manukuza, an MSc student supported by the AI4D African Languages Lab, opened the series with reflections on the welcoming event and the conference theme, “Ìmọ̀ Wa” (Shared Knowledge). She wrote about Dr. Catherine Nakalembe’s keynote on GeoAI for African challenges, Prof. David Adelani’s session on African-centric LLMs, and how a cloud GPU infrastructure tutorial connected directly to her own Master’s research on isiZulu idioms.
Read the full reflection: Deep Learning Indaba 2026 Reflection: Days 1 & 2
Day 3 — Awards, Community, and Shared Research
Moyahabo Rabothata, a PhD student supported by the AI4D African Languages Lab, reflected on Dr. Melanie Mitchell’s keynote questioning who AI progress really serves, the Alele-Williams and Kambule awards celebrating African research excellence, and a conversation with Prof. Adelani that connected directly to her own work on a mathematical reasoning benchmark for low-resource South African languages. Her day closed with the Masakhane Community Dinner and a panel on the state of African NLP.
Read the full reflection: Deep Learning Indaba 2026 Reflection: Day 3
Day 4 — Rethinking Benchmarks and Presenting Research
Dr Seani Rananga wrote about Prof. Vukosi Marivate’s keynote on rethinking AI benchmarks for African languages, the Community Session spotlighting grassroots AI ecosystems, and Research in Africa Day’s showcase of over 200 presentations. The highlight of her day was presenting her own PhD poster on multilingual misinformation detection in isiZulu and Sepedi.
Read the full reflection: Deep Learning Indaba 2026 Reflection: Day 4
Days 5 & 6 — The Workshop Days
Dr Idris Abdulmumin, a Research Associate at DSFSI, closed out the series with notes from the two workshops he co-organised: the Masakhane workshop on cultivating sovereign African NLP from media archives, and the AfricaNLP Playbook and Annotation Tool exhibition. Both sessions generated concrete follow-ups — from a proposed OCR shared task to a new sign-language annotation feature built in direct response to audience feedback.
Read the full reflection: Deep Learning Indaba 2026 Reflection: Days 5 & 6 (Workshop Days)
Looking Back
Read together, these reflections show a team that showed up across the full breadth of the conference — plenary keynotes, award ceremonies, poster sessions, and full-day workshops — while staying anchored in the same throughline: building AI and language resources that genuinely serve African communities.
Follow our journey at Deep Learning Indaba 2026 and beyond:
- DSFSI: https://linktr.ee/dsfsi
- AfriDSAI: https://linktr.ee/afridsai