Zindi’s Ambassadors are changing the world, one data science community at a time

2022 has been a wild year in the world of AI — from Midjourney and other generative AI models going mainstream, to the public release of ChatGPT, this will be remembered as the year AI went viral. At Zindi, this has been a year of lessons and new experiences, of milestones, and most of all, of connection.

Group photos are tricky when your team is distributed across a whole continent!

Our Ambassador Programme is changing the face of African data science

With a mission to build the leading professional network for data science professionals, Zindi went past 50 000 data scientists on our platform this year. This incredible achievement wouldn’t have been possible without the incredible team working with communities to advocate for data science across Africa, our Zindi Ambassadors!

The Zindi Ambassador Program has 137 ambassadors who are based in 25 countries across Africa — 79 student ambassadors, 33 community ambassadors and 25 country ambassadors. Amazing right?

Our community has made it our goal to create opportunities for all aspiring data professionals, by creating an environment for learning hands-on skills and securing job opportunities. This year we built an amazing team across the continent, who have been tirelessly putting in the work to create awareness and prepare their communities for the future of work.

In the course of 2022, we have run more than 100 community events that have been impactful to various audiences, and given out $15 000 in funding support to data science and machine learning communities across the continent. Many were beginner-friendly events that supported people starting out in the field to learn the fundamentals of data science and machine learning, use of tools such as Python, Excel, Tableau for visualisations, and much more. We also had intermediate events that led to hosting hackathons — a great introduction to the competitive and practical aspects of data science.

Building community features on Zindi

Look out for the Ambassador badge on Zindi.

Given the growth of our ambassador team and the impact they are creating, Zindi’s engineering team launched Ambassador Badges to help you find your local ambassador. Do you know any Zindi Ambassadors? You can find out by looking for the ambassador badge on someone’s profile on Zindi.

Explore your community on Zindi

We also launched a team of Zindi Insiderz — a special group of individuals who help the product team at Zindi develop features and fix challenges to enable seamless interaction within the platform. You can be an Insider and get a first look at new features before the rest of the platform gets them!

Request to join Zindi Insiderz

Lessons learnt in 2022

We’re always thinking about ways to better support our amazing community. Here are some lessons we have ‘scraped’ in 2022:

1. A passionate team keeps the dream alive. Our ambassadors voluntarily dedicate their time to help build communities, and the commitment and determination we have seen has been extremely commendable. We believe that for one to be able to successfully create maximum impact, you need vision and passion for the cause. Our ambassadors have no shortage of both.
2. Appreciation keeps the momentum going. Given the hard work the team puts in to grow their communities, appreciation is key! Every bit of appreciation keeps the momentum going, and sharing the numbers on the impact created by their hard work goes a long way.
3. Constant communication and support enables community growth. Having a large team to work with, things are bound to fall through the cracks. But constant channels of communication are important to keep the motivation going, and prevent stress within the team as they build their communities.

It has been a great year and we look forward to doing more in 2023 as we grow our Ambassador Programme even further, and prepare for UmojaHack Africa 2023 (join the event here).

Would you like to get involved with Zindi’s community efforts?

• Apply to become an ambassador: in January we will be welcoming a new cohort — you can apply now! We are particularly interested in women and people from less-represented African countries applying. Find out more and submit your application here!
• Get involved in UmojaHack Africa 2023: if you are a data science enthusiast and you’re enrolled in an African university next year, join UmojaHack Africa as a participant! In addition, you’re invited to become a university partner as we try to reach as many students as possible. Contact us to become a University Partner.
• Spread the word: every little bit of sharing helps! Please share this story with your networks if Zindi is an important part of your career or your life.

This article was written by Rose Delilah Gesicho, Zindi’s Data Science Community Coordinator. Connect with her on LinkedIn.