From Competitor to Client: Michael taps Zindi to build world-changing AI solutions for Africa

Michael Mollol from Tanzania holds a master’s and PhD in Information Communication Science and Engineering. He joined Zindi in 2018, and over time, he became one of the platform’s most active users. As he continued to learn and acquire new skills from the Zindi competitions, he met lifelong friends along the way. One of those friendships led to co-founding an AI company for African language models. Today, Michael is back on Zindi, this time as a competition host, designing and implementing a new challenge on Zindi.

Joining Zindi

During his postgraduate studies, Michael was exploring how AI could be used to solve problems in telecommunications. Michael discovered Zindi while searching for African alternatives to platforms like Kaggle. Zindi became a hands-on learning ground for Michael, where he could apply theoretical concepts, explore new models, and compete with a growing community of data scientists across the continent.

Michael also connected with other data scientists across the continent through Zindi’s discussion forums. That is how he met with Innocent Charles, a fellow competitor from Tanzania. They decided to team up after seeing each other frequently on the leaderboards. They continued participating in challenges together, and over time, that collaboration grew into co-founding an AI company.

Crossing paths, building together

Together, Michael and Innocent launched Sartify, an AI company building solutions for Africa, by Africans. Their flagship initiative, PAWA (Pan Africa Wide Alignment language model), is focused on preserving and promoting African languages like Swahili through locally relevant AI tools. “Language is culture. If we lose the language, we lose the people,” Michael says in a recent interview. “Our goal is to create small, powerful models that preserve these languages and make them accessible.”

Giving back

Michael’s journey has come full circle. From being one of over 90,000 data and AI professionals on Zindi using machine learning to solve real-world problems, he is now a founder and returned as a challenge host. Michael’s team created the “Your Voice, Your Device, Your Language Challenge,” which tasks participants with building machine learning models that can recognise spoken Swahili.

The challenge is part of their broader effort to make voice technologies more accessible to African users. Most off-the-shelf speech recognition tools don’t work well for African languages, if they support them at all. Sartify is working to close that gap. By launching this challenge on Zindi, Michael is creating an opportunity for African data scientists to contribute to a solution that directly impacts their communities. This Your Voice, Your Device, Your Language Challenge is currently live on the Zindi platform.

“It feels amazing to be on the other side,” Michael says. “Zindi helped me grow, and now I get to contribute by creating opportunities for others.”

His advice for aspiring data scientists is simple yet powerful: “Just start. Do any competition, regardless of your skill level. You’ll discover what you’re good at and what excites you.”

Zindi is building a powerful pipeline of talent where learning, connecting, and meeting real opportunities happen. If you are looking for a platform to build talent, solve real problems, or discover what’s possible with AI, Zindi brings the right people together.