Synapse - Africa’s 4IR Trade & Innovation Magazine - 4th Quarter 2019 Issue 06

SYNAPSE

4th QUARTER 2019 ZAR25 | US$2.50 | Euro1.60

The Voice of African AI & Data Science Sw7 & Amazon Web Services Team up to Deliver Africa’s First Virtual B2B Technology Business Accelerator

ZINDI LAUNCHES NEW MACHINE LEARNING CHALLENGE TO IMPROVE ROAD SAFETY IN CAPE TOWN

AI EXPO 2019 HAILED AS HUGE SUCCESS SHOW REVIEW IN PICS Intelligent Spend Management - The Key to Accelerating Business Performance with SAP

AI EXPO AFRICA AWARDS ALL THE WINNERS!

Cirrus AI: A New AI Research Initiative for Africa - A Collaborative Partnership Between WITS School of Chemistry & Cortex Group

OCULAR TECHNOLOGIES APPOINTED LOCAL GENESYS VALUE-ADD RESELLER, WITH STRONG FOCUS ON DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION & AI

Cape Town and the Western Cape Tech Capital of Africa We are a region of unlimited potential. And this translates into unlimited opportunity for those in tech.

We have a world-class digital ecosystem, where resources and talent meet commercial and social opportunity. We are a region that sees digital disruption as less of a thing and more as a way of doing things. Our destination is a place with an interconnected business landscape, offering access to a shared economy, powered by tech-savvy investors. Our city is full of talented and highly skilled people, where opportunities to grow and make a global difference abound. We also have an unfair share of natural beauty. So it’s no surprise that global tech companies choose our destination to have headquarters, as a springboard into growing markets, and as a place to work and play.

Wesgro, the official tourism, trade and investment promotion agency for Cape Town and the Western Cape, can help you uncover these opportunities in the tech space.

Wesgro

@wesgro

Wesgro

www.wesgro.co.za | info@wesgro.co.za | +27 (0) 21 487 8600

CONTENTS 4TH QUARTER 2019

2

AI Expo Africa Celebrates Growth in 2nd Year

4

Sw7 and Amazon Web Services Team up to Deliver Africa’s First Virtual B2B Technology Business Accelerator

6

Blue Prism Showcases AI Digital Exchange at AI Expo Africa

7

Don’t be Fooled – RPA and AI are all About People

8

Ocular Technologies Review: Winners of Best Demo at the AI Expo Africa

10

AI Expo Africa 2019 Hailed as Huge Success - Show Review in Pics

22

Ocular appointed as local Genesys Value-Add Reseller, with Strong Focus on Digital Transformation and AI

24

All the Winners! AI Expo Africa 2019 Awards

26

What Delegates & Sponsors said about AI Expo Africa 2019

27

Thank You to Sponsors, Exhibitors, Partners & Supporters

30

Q & A with Kobus van der Westhuizen – Founder & CEO of Genii AI

32

South African Automated support from ATURA Empowers Financial Sector to Better Serve Clients

34

Intelligent Spend Management: the Key to Accelerating Business Performance with SAP

36

Zindi Launches New Machine Learning Challenge to Improve Road Safety in Cape Town

38

Unlock the Value of Your Data with DataSeed

40

CapeTown AI Seeks Wildlife Reserve for ‘AI for Wildlife’ Project

41

Cape Town Tech Week

42

Microsoft Host Level UP for new AI ISVs

44

XIB Solutions Implement Powerful, Pre-emptive Solutions that Evolve with Your Business

46 Struggling with Customer Loyalty? Personalize and Automate your Campaigns Across all Channels with Exacaster 48 Cirrus AI: A New AI Research Initiative for Africa. A Collaborative Partnership Between WITS School of Chemistry & Cortex Group 50

4IRI (Fourth Industrial Revolution Incubator)

52 Exciting Companies, Insightful Talks & Buzzing Atmosphere – AI Expo Africa 2019 Review by MTN Innovation Wall Winner 56

RoboCup: Advancing the State-of-the-Art in Robotics and AI

60

Using AI to Predict Droughts, Floods and Conflic Displacements in Somalia

66

Cape Invest Highlights AI Expo Africa

68

Namibia University of Science & Technology - Faculty of Computing & Informatics

70

AI in Africa - An Open Innovation Community that Drives Talent Identificatio & Entrepreneurship

72

CAIR Hosts AI Expert at UCT

74

Zebra Technologies - The Future of Retailing is Right Here

AI Expo Africa Celebrates Growth in 2nd Year South African Telecommunictaions Minister Stella NdabeniAbrahams Addresses AI Expo Africa Delegates & Pledges Support for 2020 Show

4TH QUARTER 2019

Watch the Latest AI TV Broadcasts

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Wow - what a year ! As we look back at AI Expo Africa 2020 and the African AI scene in general we can all be proud with the growth of the community. We are now at 3000+ members, exceeded 1000+ delegates at AI Expo Africa 2019 and the launch of AI TV (Africa’s only dedicated AI African centric streaming channel) has been a great success. We have begun to see a greater interest in the 4IR in Africa with the “AI Economic Pipeline” becoming a reality with grass roots skills development kicking off around the continent and a great integration between communities.

Big strides were made with linking academic / industrial R&D as well as NGOs into our show and we are seeing bigger international interest - this all bodes well for healthy future growth. We hope you enjoy this bumper edition of Synapse and wishing you, your family and business a happy holiday period. See you all again in 2020 !

AS WE look back on the 2nd AI Expo Africa and close off what has been an eventful and productive year in the African AI Community, we would like to thank all our Sponsors, Exhibitors, Supporters and Partners who have made the growth in AI Expo Africa possible.

In building Africa’s largest AI Event, Nick and I have been fortunate to have partners in this community that have believed in our vision to stage an event that has been unrivalled in support and success, and one that has allowed us to explore new media, education and skills development initiatives to serve this growing community and industry.

This issue of Synapse contains a photographic review of the successful 2019 show. We look forward to seeing you all at AI Expo Africa 2020 (3 & 4 September 2020) at the same great venue.

Pre-Register now to Guarantee the Lowest FullDelegate Ticket price for 2020.

Nick Bradshaw - AI Media Co-Founder & Community Director

Roy Bannister - AI Media Co-Founder & Editor-in-Chief

Contact Lenore Kerrigan | Country Sales Director South Africa | mobile: +27 83 212 4452 | e-mail: Lenore.Kerrigan@uipath.com

SW7 AND AMAZON WEB SERVICES Team up to Deliver Africa’s First

Virtual B2B Technology Business Accelerator

4TH QUARTER 2019

Sw7 and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have teamed up to introduce Africa’s first Virtual B2B Technology Business Accelerator.

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THE NEW virtual accelerator will assist Founders of B2B/Saas Technology businesses looking to scale on AWS, offerin additional business support through primarily digital channels. Founders of startups often ask for guidance on how to scale and build their businesses, this includes skills such as pitching, creating effective go-to-marke strategies and investor readiness.

Through AWS Activate, AWS provides startups with the low cost, easy to use infrastructure needed to grow and scale.

With the AWS Activate program, startups get access to the resources they need to quickly get started on AWS – including credits, training, and support.

Feedback we have received from a number of technology cohorts tells us that traditional accelerator programs are often exclusive, inflexible, interrupt operations and serve less than 1% of technology markets, requiring time-off for extended period to attend boot-camps, on dates and times outside of their availability.

“We are excited to team up with AWS, to offer an inclusive community-supported, data-driven approach that assists B2B technology businesses to effectively scale,” says Odette Jones Sw7 Co-founder. “ Businesses pay for the level of support they want without giving up equity and avoid the constraints imposed by traditional programme-centric approaches . This cost-based model is appealing - it’s the best of all worlds.”

Keith Jones, Sw7 Co-founder says “The OKR (Objective Key Result) structure Sw7 uses, enables us to move away from a programme-centric curriculum and batch-based ‘transmit’ approach, and moves to a more business needs and outcomes-based approach where the content, tools and templates are curated for each business, offering market an sector relevant support in context. This makes engagements with our mentor pool more effective as they have clarity abou the status and goals of each business. High growth is all about focus and execution once you have a clear direction. Sw7 offer a strategy execution approach to support this.”

There are three levels of membership and support Business Community, Business Growth & Business Scale.

Business Community is an inclusive community for technology businesses and Founders at all life stages that ABOUT SW7

offers shared insights & learnings, busines assessments, additional sector and life stage relevant content and reports at no cost to the business. Businesses get up to US$3K of AWS Activate credits for up to one year including 2 months of AWS business support.

Business Growth offers access t Sw7 hosted mentor-led digital dial-ins & digital workshops, full access to the Sw7 acceleration platform which includes sector and life stage relevant tools, templates, content, reports and AWS hosting credits of up to US$10K and up to AWS US$5K business support for one year. This level is aimed at technology business at all life stages wishing to move their business forward in a more structured way and costs US$50 pcm with an initial payment of three months.

Business Scale offers one-on-one strategy workshops access to Sw7 hosted mentor sessions, Board Advisory, Strategy Setup and Execution through the Sw7 platform, US$15k Activate credits for up to 2 years to build on AWS, with the possibility of increasing the AWS Activate credits to US$100K for eligible businesses, tech support for up to $5k for dedicated technical support on-line for up to 1 year, “Startup Spotlight” nominations for free PR and access to new markets with Startup Marketplace (SaaS Sellers market). Capital Connect offers acces to a global pool of VC’s. This is for ISV, B2B, SaaS post-revenue technology businesses with some traction and will be limited to twenty businesses for the three-month pilot phase. 50% of the Business Scale fees are covered by AWS so founders will only pay US$200 monthly for 3 months paid upfront, not the listed US$400 per month.

Schedule Access to Business Community will be open to all applicants and will be offered on an ongoing basis. The initial phase o Business Growth & Business Scale will be offered to founder based in South Africa. Recruitment will be open until the 15th of December, the programme will start on the 13th of January 2020 and will run until the 30th April 2020 with a two-week break over Easter. The intention is to run this as an ongoing offering to businesses throughout Africa Apply here: www.sw7.co/amazon ai

Sw7 partners with technology businesses, portfolios and their investor networks pre- and post fundraising to prepare for technology business valuations, to fundraise & find matched funding, to provide business support, board advisory, to assist with off-shore expansion and sale of the business. Sw7 are one of the leading technology accelerators in Africa, having run 9 cohorts including the first Fintech Accelerator in Africa and have worked with over 300+ technology businesses & Founders from early-stage to growth, funding & exit with shared insights from 100+ experienced Technology Founder CEOs. The Sw7 LinkedIn group in Africa has over five thousand members & partners include Amazon, Microsoft & Google.

Join the Digital Exchange community Everyoneʼs talking about AI and the smart solutions that make what we do every day even easier.

Whether itʼs using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to identify risk, analyzing digital images via computer vision or simply delivering standout customer experiences faster and without error, staying competitive in business today meeans having the right technology at your fingertips.

Welcome to the Digital Exchange community – a professional marketplace for consuming and sharing AI technology thatʼs driving greater operational agility and improved business results.

Ready to join the Digital Exchange community? Visit today at: digitalExchange.BluePrism.com …or learn more about how to empower your people with Blue Prism RPA at BluePrism.com

About Blue Prism As the pioneer, innovator and market leader in Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Blue Prism delivers the world’s most successful Digital Workforce. The company’s intelligent digital workers provide business leaders with new operational capacity and intelligent skills to automate mission critical business processes, while meeting the requirements of the most demanding IT environments, where security, compliance and scalability are paramount.

Blue Prism provides a scalable and robust execution platform for best-of-breed AI and cognitive technologies and has emerged as the trusted and secure RPA platform of choice for the Fortune 500.

For more information visit www.blueprism.com BluePrism.com

BLUE PRISM SHOWCASES AI Digital Exchange at AI Expo Africa Blue Prism, a global leader in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) market, showcased its comprehensive artificial intelligence Digital Exchange (DX) at AI Expo Africa this week, setting in place the foundation for South African businesses to begin their journey into the era of AI. The DX can be likened to an ‘app store’ for artificial intelligence (AI) products.

“OUR VISION for connected-RPA is about giving the power of creativity to an organization’s people, while maintaining control and connecting innovations together, so individual work adds up to a far more powerful whole,” says Alastair Bathgate, CEO and co-founder at Blue Prism.

He says that with most South African organisations now at the start of their AI journey, they face a significant chall nge in assessing the hundreds of AI technologies available, and determining which of them are right for their organisation.

At some point, they will need to ‘plumb’ the technology into the organisation’s systems – even to run a POC – but the IT department does not always have the bandwidth or resources to test or implement the myriad solutions on the market.

To solve these problems, Blue Prism has created the Digital Exchange – an ecosystem of key AI companies, large and small, that offer new and disruptive AI technology. Blue Pris partners with AI stakeholders to undertake all integration work and make their technology available via the Digital Exchange.

The DX takes the burden of integration away from IT, providing all the information they need to know: type of technology, what it does, demos, customer use cases and the ability to download

4TH QUARTER 2019

Dean Hannant, VP Presales EMEA, Greg Newton, Sales Director - Africa and Chris Banks, Customer Success Director ready to kick off AI Africa Expo today in Cap Town South Africa.

6 Dean Hannant, Blue Prism VP Presales EMEA and Greg Newton, Sales Director Africa, speaking to EY at the Blue Prism booth at AI Africa Expo in Cape Town, South Africa today.

straight onto the Blue Prism platform and start using it.

Aiming to make AI consumable for organisations, Blue Prism can act as the digital operating system connecting back offi systems, data, people and new emerging technology such as AI. Blue Prism is a pioneer, innovator and leader in the RPA market, fields a lab of international PhDs to develop innovatio s such as the intelligent Digital Workforce, called connected-RPA, which is currently in use in more than 1,500 global customers to securely automate at scale and perform mission critical processes either in the cloud or on premises.

Ready to join the Digital Exchange Community? Visit today at DigitalExchange.BluePrism.com or learn more about how to empower your people with Blue Prism connected-RPA at www.BluePrism.com ai

DON’T BE FOOLED

– RPA and AI

are all About People

adoption in South Africa has actually decreased.

The reason for this being that there are so many AI technologies out there that it can be hard to sift through everything and find the right fit. In addition, the dip in AI adoption can also be explained by the fact that making effective use of AI isn’t as simple as just flipping a switch. It requires careful planning, clean data, analysis of this data and backing and support from senior business executives.

To help businesses struggling on their journey, we’ve partnered with some of the best companies around the world to create the Blue Prism Digital Exchange. Rather than spending precious time, and money, integrating individual AI components, we’ve developed an ecosystem that works in a similar to Google’s Play Store or the Apple App Store. Here, clients can quickly download and use AI applications that have already been integrated and configured to work on the Blue Prism platform. This allows companies to quickly test out different technologies. If one is not the right fit, they can simply disconnect and try something else.

The real purpose of solutions like AI and RPA is to level the playing field and enable businesses of all sizes and across all industries to do more with less. And coming back to the “people” aspect of this conversation, businesses are only transforming because they understand how these tools can help them to offer their customers a better experience.

Our conversations with new clients always start out with asking what they’re actually trying to do.

Sometimes AI and RPA aren’t the right fit. In instances where these technologies can have an impact, we then take the time to help our customers find the prefect solution to meet their needs.

To learn more about Blue Prism and our Digital Exchange, visit our website: www.blueprism.com ai

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“ULTIMATELY, THE future of work isn’t a digital workforce replacing a human workforce. It’s one that sees a digital workforce augmenting and supports the existing employees. This is why people are so important,” says Greg Newton, Blue Prism’s sales director for Africa.

And our conversations at the recent AI Expo Africa 2019 in Cape Town reiterated this fact. During our time at the expo we had the chance to develop our relationship with existing clients and partners and to speak to potential customers looking for advice or a helping hand. “I love technology, but the people side is such a critical part of things. There is something so much more tangible about interacting with someone face-to-face. The amount you learn in these settings is incredible,” adds Newton.

As sponsors of the event, we also got the chance to attend some of the sessions and engage with those wanting to find out more about intelligent automation.

We invited our client, Old Mutual to speak at the event and Kusheel Amritlall, Head of R&D – Cognitive Automation & AI shared insights about the brand’s AI journey over the last 12 months. See video interview with Greg and Kusheel here.

In chatting to South African businesses across all industries, we’ve found that so many people are keen to embrace AI and RPA, and they’re ready to do so, but few actually understand what it’s all about.

“It’s crucial for us to be part of an event like this because there are so many companies who are interested in intelligent automation but don’t know where to start,” Newton explains. “We often see organisations struggling to implement these technologies and battling to scale and it’s because they don’t know how to consume RPA and AI.” And research proves this. While RPA implementations have gone up in the last year, AI

4TH QUARTER 2019

Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) may be the ‘hot topics’ across the tech industry but these innovations are only as successful as the people behind them. Those punting the use cases, those at the coalface integrating solutions with legacy tech and the users whose jobs will be changed once AI and RPA are in place.

OCULAR TECHNOLOGIES REVIEW: Winners of Best Demo at AI Expo Africa

4TH QUARTER 2019

Ocular Technologies’ founder & CEO, Pommie Lutchman, was thrilled to scoop the award for ‘Best Product Demo’ at the recent AI Expo Africa trade show and conference, as well as being named as runner-up for the show’s ‘Best Stand’ title. “The Ocular team and I spent a considerable amount of time planning , deliberating and collaborating as a lead-up to this event, so to be received the way we were is remarkably rewarding!”

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A SOUTH African specialist customer engagement and digital experience solutions provider, Ocular joined forces with power AI player and partner company IBM at the 2019 event.

IBM was ranked as the Worldwide Market Share Leader in Artificial Intelligence by IDC for the third consecutive year i October 2019.

“We wanted to prove to visitors that AI is the new UI – the new user interface – using exciting multiple media such as text, social media, messaging platforms, ‘NAO’, our singing and dancing robot, and Amazon’s Alexa on our stand,” says Lutchman. The company also showcased South Africa’s firs pizza bot (powered by IBM Watson), which was extremely well received by AI community members, honoured guests and students alike.

“Delegates’ reactions to the Ocular stand were amazing.

NAO was a real draw-card for us, and Alexa played a big role in keeping visitors’ attention. Feedback received by Ocular was that there is a profound local interest in cognitive computing, and in predictive- and prescriptive analytics and natural language understanding (NLU) in particular.”

According to Lutchman, Ocular’s main objective at AI Expo Africa was to gain exposure within the African AI space, highlight its position at the forefront of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), and forge face-to-face relationships with delegates and visitors.

“Ocular shares AI Media Group’s broader vision to create an AI-powered future for Africa, informing people on what

to expect as we embrace 4IR across the continent, for social and economic benefit. AI Expo Africa is indeed the larges business-focused AI and data science B2B trade event and conference in Africa, and Ocular recognised that, here, we could promote our solutions pre-, during, and post-event in Synapse magazine and within the AI Community group.

“A real stand-out moment for us was when telecommunications Minister, Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams – who pledged her support for AI Expo Africa 2020 and wider industry via the 4IR Fund at the event – showed immense interest in our offerings and especially in NAO. We wer also pleased to have featured in the SABC’S media coverage of the event, which showed Ocular Technologies and NAO juxtaposed to Minister Ndabeni-Abrahams, Amazon Web Services and the Robo World Cup. “Ocular Technologies has had a presence at many conference and expos, but this was the first time that w experienced this level of support and commitment to our brand from the organisers, with ongoing assistance to ensure that we gained the maximum benefit “From providing advice on our delegate bag inserts and co-ordinating our marketing content, as well as constant communication, the organisers played a major role in helping Ocular ensure that our efforts at the show stood out in th minds of the delegates, cementing our engagement in the minds of all who attended, and illuminating our presence in the AI Community.” ai

Make your Best Employee a Digital Employee Intelligent machines are changing the world, and we can now use them to make better decisions in our own everyday lives.

From automation & decision making to language & sentiment detection, you can now have an AI powered superhero in your organization with personalized chatbots from Ocular Technologies.

Welcome back Mr. Cook, Would you like to order the pepperoni pizza with extra cheese again?

Yes Please!

Speak to us about revolutionizing your Customer eXperience.

www.ocu.cx | info@ocu.cx

0861 OCULAR

sketch.dinosaur.hurry

AI Expo Africa 2019

4TH QUARTER 2019

Hailed as a Huge Success

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In only its 2nd year, Africa’s largest Artificial Intelligence business Expo & Conference has entrenched itself as the leading AI event on the continent. With its unique community-based approach, superb mix of local and international AI thought leaders and forum for start-ups, vendors, platform providers, exhibitors and sponsors to showcase their AI business and social offerings, the event draws top-level c-suite delegates from across all business and government sectors looking to understand AI and implement it in their operations.

THE 2019 event drew support from the City of Cape Town, Wesgro & Cape Invest and a highlight of this year’s event was a visit by Telecommunications Minister, Stella NdabeniAbrahams who, after a lengthy review of the AI exhibitors, addresses a standing-room only plenary hall on the South African government’s 4IR and AI plans, and also pledged support for AI Expo Africa 2020.

The dates have already been announced for AI Expo Africa 2020: 2 - 4 September 2020 (VIP Opening & Awards Evening - 2 Sept, Show & Conference Days - 3 &4 Sept.

Century City Conference Centre, Cape Town South Africa).

Community members and Synapse readers can Guarantee the lowest Full-Delegate Rate by Pre-Registering for 2020 event (only pay in 2020) - here:

Highlights from AI Expo 2019:

community members + 160% growth

1027

registered delegates + 42% growth

372

companies + 35% growth

106

speakers + 53% growth

53

accredited media & press + 0,5% growth

55

sponsors + 27% growth

35%

female engineers at talent workshops+ 34% growth

9000

square feet of expo & trade space

The stats above represent initial feedback from survey respondents immediately from the event (115 in total as of 7th September 2019). More detailed inputs will come when more respondents reply over the next 4 weeks.

News & Launches at Show • South African 4IR Fund announced by Minister Stella Abrahams to help grow the 4IR economy • Keynotes from AI thought leaders Simon See, Karim Beguir & Jacques Ludik • Wits University launch Cirrus Foundry with Cortex Group to stimulate AI start-up scene in SA • French embassy delegation joined for first time bringing multip e companies to trade in region • The launch of The Robo World Cup in Africa along with Robot

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Headline Stats 2019

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Workshop with children from Mitchells Plain • ITU Global AI For Good Summit Switzerland seeks to collaboration with AI Expo Africa 2020 • Invite from ITU to SA Ministerial Delegation to attend 2020 AI for Good Conference • Start up Enlabler launches data labelling app for mass job creation in SA / Africa • Fliptin & AI in Africa showcase their AI teaching programme for schools in disadvantaged communities • Signing of agreement between TIA & French Embassy “Young Enterprise Initiative” (YEI ZA) • Multiple new products showcased at Expo from 50+ vendors and 100+ speakers • “Tech Adjacent” book launch by Mushambi Mutuma – An African perspective on the 4IR in our region

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Original Concept • The 2019 programme had a range of new features for sponsors and speakers alike building upon the success of AI Expo Africa 2018 held in South Africa. Outline of main activity was as follows; • Build & VIP Opening & Awards Event – Tuesday 3rd September 2019 • Main show September 4th – 5th September 2019 • Evening networking reception • 4x Track speaking programme with 60+ talks & keynotes • 4x Skills workshops aimed at young engineers / student talent • Media / VIP area •Complimentary Executive delegate pack • Food, refreshments, wifi & free parkin included as standard New features for 2019 New – Technical Demo Zone New – AI Art & Music Competition New – Dedicated AI Innovation Cafe with additional catering New – Executive workshops aimed at CxO / Decision Makers New – Innovation Wall showcasing academic R&D for industry uses New – AI.TV Media Hub / Interview Suite

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OCULAR APPOINTED AS LOCAL

Genesys Value-Add Reseller, with strong focus on digital transformation and AI Ocular Technologies, a South African specialist customer engagement and digital experience solutions provider, has achieved Value-Add Reseller (VAR) status with Genesys, the global leader of omnichannel customer experience and contact centre solutions. As a VAR, Ocular will focus on the Genesys PureConnect platform, an omnichannel contact centre solution for mid-market to large organisations.

While Ocular will specialise in on-premises deployments, PureConnect is also available in the cloud. The solution allows businesses to minimise risk and enables support to thousands of users on one server with a single set of integrated applications.

“Genesys has made significant headway in helping companies across the globe replace legacy systems from multiple providers with transformational solutions that allows for predictive, efficient and contextual customer experiences. In the process, it has established itself as a leader in both cloud and on-premises customer experience solutions by leading industry analysts,” says Pommie Lutchman, CEO and founder of Ocular Technologies.

PureConnect allows for fast access to self-service, inbound

digital, outbound, workforce optimisation, analytics and integrations solutions. New digital channels and real-time speech analytics can be quickly and easily added, while maintaining a single view of the customer across channels using a real-time dashboard. “PureConnect reporting capabilities provide a snapshot of current contact centre statistics, as well as identifying trends within a deeper analysis of an entire call history,” explains Lutchman.

“PureConnect complements our existing customer engagement and digital experience offering by providing excellent capabilities within a streamlined footprint. The company’s global reach, local support, clear product focus and stability made it excellent fit for Ocular,” he adds.

“With 16 years of experience within the customer engagement sector and deep understanding of the process clients need to undergo for true digital transformation, Ocular is well positioned to help businesses extend the value of PureConnect,” says Frikkie Hurn, Senior Account Executive – Channel at Genesys. ”We see Ocular playing an important role in the South African market in the roll out of our flexible subscription model for on-premises customers.” ai

ABOUT OCULAR TECHNOLOGIES

Ocular Technologies is a specialist customer engagement and digital experience solutions provider. We employ a unique set of individuals who are experts in understanding, managing, and ultimately ensuring, an optimal customer experience. With a vision of being regarded as an internationally respected leader in the customer engagement market, Ocular Technologies strives to have our customers appear as heroes in the eyes of their clients.

We hold more than 15 years’ experience in the customer contact life-cycle space, and create a quantifiable business impact through intelligent interaction management, robotic process automation, ambient computing, natural language processing, and cognitive analysis and design.

Drawing from a focused selection of best-of-breed technologies and methodologies, Ocular Technologies is outstandingly positioned to offer a holistic solution including strategy and planning, implementation and delivery, as well as enablement and operations. As a 100% black-owned, Level 1 B-BBEE contributor, Ocular Technologies has the added advantage of offering a Preferential Procurement level of 135%.

CONTACTS: Ocular, Pommie Lutchman, 011 589 3200, pommie.lutchman@oculartechnologies.com

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AI Expo Africa 2019 Awards

The AI Expo Africa Awards are based on feedback from the African AI community and delegates who attended the show and recognise the hard work, innovation and dedication of those companies or individuals in the African AI community who are at the forefront of AI in Africa.

4TH QUARTER 2019

AT THE AI Expo Africa 2019 show, delegates are given the opportunity to vote for 9 stand out categories of award to reflect the effort and dedication by the individual recipients d companies as seen in the eyes of the delegates and partners that attend. Now the votes have been counted and the results are as follows:

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BEST PLENARY KEYNOTE Winner – Dr Simon See – Nvidia 2nd Place – Dr Karim Beguir – InstaDeep BEST MAIN TALK Winner – Dr Jay Van Zyl – Ecosystem AI 2nd Place – Chris Currin – UCT BEST FLASH TALK Winner – Jade Abbott – Retro Rabbit 2nd Place – Amira Abbas – UKZN BEST WORKSHOP Winner – Rhoban RoboCup Joint 2nd Place – AWS & UiPath BEST DEMO Winner – Ocular Technologies 2nd Place – UiPath

BEST STAND Winner – UiPath 2nd Place – Ocular Technologies BEST START UP [ HOSTED @ THE AWS INNOVATION CAFE ] Winner – Offer Ze Joint 2nd Place – 2 Way Systems & Grenadilla Insurance BEST POSTER [ HOSTED @ THE MTN INNOVATION WALL ] Winner – Christopher Dunderdale – Photovoltaic Defect Classification through Thermal Infrared Imaging using Machine Learning – Nelson Mandela University 2nd Place – Jeanne Daniel – Towards Automating Healthcare Question Answering in a Noisy Multilingual LowResource Setting – University of Stellenbosch AI MEDIA DIRECTORS AWARD Winner – Mustapha Zaouini – AI in Africa & FLIPTIN for an outstanding contribution to grass roots AI skills development with young learners in South Africa ai Don’t Miss the 2020 AI Expo Africa Awards & VIP Opening Evening - Mark the Date: 2 Sept 2020 (Evening Before AI Expo Afirca Conference & Show Days on 3 & 4 September) www.aiexpoafrica.com

WHAT DELEGATES AND

Sponsors said about AI Expo Africa 2019

“ “ “

“ ” “ ”

“ “

“

“What an amazing few days spent with like minded individuals, organizations, startups, enthusiasts and those just plainly curious!”

- Izak De Beer, SAP

“AI Expo Africa was nothing less then inspirational. Looking forward to 2020 Expo” - Francois Ferreira, Capitec Bank

“Talking to the smaller vendors, particularly the ones in the Innovation Cafe was the highlight for me” - Gordon Inggs, City of Cape Town

” ”

“I learnt so much at this year’s AI Expo Africa and cannot wait to return next year” - Khumoetsile Khumalo, Absa Bank

4TH QUARTER 2019

“AI Expo Africa is indeed the largest business-focused AI and data science B2B trade event and conference in Africa. From providing advice on our delegate bag inserts and co-ordinating our marketing content, as well as constant communication, the organisers played a major role in helping Ocular ensure that our efforts a the show stood out in the minds of the delegates, cementing our engagement in the minds of all who attended, and illuminating our presence in the AI Community.”

- Pommie Lutchman, Ocular Technologies Founder & CEO.

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“It was great the see a diverse field o innovators across business, academia and social enterprises take on our continents challenges” - Francis Mumbi, Stanbic Bank

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“Excellent conference. Looking forward to next year” - Deon Du Preez, Dimension Data Middle East and Africa

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“What an epic week of awesome mental stimulation. My brain has been opened to a whole new exciting world for me” - John Morison, Polyoak Packaging

“Excellent event” - Sugendran Pillay, Standard Bank Group

“Great event, had a fantastic panel discussion regarding youth and woman” - Brigitte Binneman, Technology Innovation Agency, South Africa

4TH QUARTER 2019

Thank You to All AI Expo 2019 Sponsors, Exhibitors & Supporters

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4TH QUARTER 2019

GENII AI Q& A with Kobus van der Westhuizen – Founder & CEO of Genii AI

• Please describe, as best possible in layman’s terms, Genii AI’s core business Genii Ai is a global Technology As A Service a (TAAS) company that develop artificial intelligence (AI) an machine learning solutions to Top 500 companies in the Financial Services, Telco, Healthcare, Insurance, Automotive and Retail sectors.

We help B2C companies improve customer service (CX), sales and customer retention.

Genii develop robust Ai models and leverage Natural Language Processing (NLP), Text Analytics and machine learning on platforms such as Google, AWS and Azure for the prediction models.

We have development labs in South Africa and has established global partnerships with large technology providers in Africa, Australia, UK and USA. Genii Ai currently have 35 employees, including business analysts, data scientists, data engineers and software engineers.

Apart from our “off the shelf” Ai platforms, we also off bespoke development. Genii Ai also offer consulting services i order to develop a strategy, platforms and internal capabilities.

• How fast is this industry growing currently, and what are the challenges?

It is probably one of the most topical boardroom discussions in the modern business era.

It is debated globally that the 4th Industrial revolution is already in progress and as many leaders will testify, Ai is going to change the way we live, let alone do business.

The global race for Ai dominance is led by countries such as China and the USA, who are spending billions of dollars in Ai research and development, and companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft who wants to lead the innovation.

South Africa, although a small country, is well positioned to take some of the global market share as an exporter of Ai innovation. Genii Ai is already exporting innovation from South Africa in partnership with large global technology companies such as Genesys and Amazon Connect.

IDC forecast that Ai revenues will grow from $8billion in the USA alone, to $47billion over the next few years.

(IDC). Forecasting for the market for big data technology and services to grow at a 23.1% compound annual growth rate, reaching $48.6 billion in 2019. IDC predicts that by 2020,

50% of all business analytics software will include prescriptive analytics and that embedded data analytics will provide U.S. enterprises $60+ billion in annual savings by 2020.

However, many companies don’t have an Ai strategy yet, or is still unconvinced as to the real benefits that Ai can delive . This will mature rapidly when the Ai companies deliver more and more successful solutions to demonstrate value.

Please demystify AI and Predictive analytics?

Ai has many different descriptions, depending on who you tal to. In laymen terms, Ai is the combination of data, computational machine learning and algorithms. There are many differen techniques, equations and engineering languages that could be used to develop an Ai model or asset. Ai is not new, but Ai has been popularised and democratised over the past 10 years with the advent of more powerful, flexible and more affordab computing platforms, especially cloud computing such as AWS, Google and Azure.

We could categorise Ai and machine learning into three categories.

Cognitive Ai, is trying to re-engineer the way humans think, talk and act.

Robotics Ai, is automating or enabling robotics, robots or processes.

Data Ai, is automating the processing, analysis of large amounts of data to identify outputs such as trends and or future predictions.

Genii Ai is focusing on the latter. We predict future consumer behaviours based on historical data and social human behavioural sciences.

Analytics can be categorised as Descriptive Analytics (what is happening), Predictive (what is going to happen) and Prescriptive (what to do with it proactively).

An example of Predictive Analytics is when the outputs of the Ai models predict future behaviours of customers, i.e. Churn prediction, based on historical behaviours, historical data and social sciences.

Without getting technical, in this case the historical data will feed into a pre-developed machine learning platform, coded with algorithms, to look for patterns, associations and correlations in the data in order to predict outcomes. The data scientist will use different techniques and algorithms to improve accuracy of th outputs.

• How can companies use AI and Predictive analytics to their advantage?

Forbes research state that Ai will provide the following more generic benefits to companies 40% Increased Productivity 28% Reduced Operating Costs 21% Improved Speed to Market 20% Transformed business and operating models Over the past 5 years, Genii have assisted companies to achieve different business benefits. The Quantum prediction model predicts future customer service needs and customer interactions. The outputs provide a list of customers (Who, why & when) customers will contact for service during their customer journey?

This enable a company to launch proactive customer service, thus reducing the need for customer to call the call centres. This results in massive cost savings for the company and improve customer satisfaction at the same time.

Another model will predict customer churn. Again, Quantum Ai will predict who will leave and why? The company can then proactively save the customer by resolving any issues.

Historically this resulted into a multi-million ROI.

“

Would Ai threaten human jobs in the future?

Ai will definitely have an impact on future jobs. However, its ot necessarily true that it would reduce jobs, but would change the future workforce by creating different jobs. Its not ma vs. machine, but rather man and machine that will be the most effective. We refer to it loosely as co-botics. In certai applications, Ai will assist humans to do work faster and more accurate in most cases.

How does data drive/influence business today Nowadays, companies collect enormous amounts of customer data, but across different data sources. It is said loosely i the market that “data is the new oil”. The companies who can leverage customer data for ethical “consumer good”, will benefi significantly. However, regulations around the ethical use o consumer data will have a big impact on the application of Ai, especially when collecting and using consumer data without their consent.

• Why should data be collected at all?

Ai needs data, and in some cases large quantities, depending on the models. Different Ai models will need different data set Data engineering for Ai in most cases is more time consuming that developing the actual algorithms. Although data access can be a barrier to Ai, it is becoming less of a barrier with the advent of AutoML. We now have algorithms that could prepare data better to reduce human effort • Is all data valuable and considered as intelligent, or are there superfluous quantities that can be disregarded It is critical to develop a business case or “reason” for the Ai platform before designing the data blueprint. This would

Genii Ai is a global ‘Technology As A Service’ (TAAS) company that develop artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning solutions to Top 500 companies in the Financial Services, Telco, Healthcare, Insurance, Automotive and Retail sectors.

”

define what data is required to eventually deliver the required outputs. Both structured and unstructured data is required to mature a specific prediction model. In some cases, the unstructured data is not required, but in some cases large amounts of “superfluous” data is required to create “noise” in order to make the outputs more accurate. Genii would use for instance customer interaction data, CRM data and billing data to predict future customer churn.

• What is the best way for a business to define its data, an how do they even make sense of it?

In order to enable Ai and prediction analytics, companies need to have the correct data to feed the platforms. This could be structured and or unstructured data. When predicting future consumer behaviours, a company needs at least historical customer data for a defined period i.e. POS, CRM, billing interaction data etc.

• Is there value in creating internal data hubs or data science teams?

Most companies will establish an internal data management or data engineering/science capability for the future application of Ai. At Genii we will create data “speedboats” by extracting very specific data from larger data sources or “data tankers” in ord r to accelerate the Ai models. The most successful model currently, is where a company combine an internal team with a more flexibl Ai development partner to create “speed to insights”.

• Can data be destroyed/eliminated completely, or will there always be a footprint shadow (not sure of the correct terminology here) Data security is becoming an imperative for any company, large or small. Being able to secure the data, as well as manage it properly.

This includes being able to delete customer data effectively ei her as per regulations or at a customer’s request.

• How should a company manage, control and protect the data it produces?

With extreme caution, ensuring security, privacy and ethical application. Data security is very high on the strategic agenda of all companies. We have seen large global companies struggle with the regulators and consumers when breaches happen. ai Article, previously published elsewhere, courtesy of Genii AI.

SOUTH AFRICAN AUTOMATED support from ATURA Empowers Financial Sector to Better Serve Clients

Robotic chat advisor Atura takes advantage of artificial intelligence (AI) to offer powerful sales, onboarding, customer support, and transactional chatbot services, which improve customer experiences while reducing fees. Customers receive immediate assistance throughout the client lifecycle. Vetted by several banks as a secure platform, Atura takes advantage of Microsoft Azure AI infrastructure to build game-changing digital assistants.

4TH QUARTER 2019

MANY CUSTOMERS, especially those in Africa, struggle with internet access and mobile data availability. These connectivity issues can make accessing information about credit facilities, insurance premiums, and investments difficult, since often t access must be handled through call centers or data-heavy websites. Reminders about payment deadlines can also be lost due to poor connectivity, resulting in missed payments. For many customers, missed payment deadlines can mean having to pay additional administrative fees, adding to their financial stres .

Atura is a robotic chat advisor for financial service customers. Owned by Cape Town software firm NML, Atura wa founded in 2016. After preliminary research, Atura began to take shape, becoming more focused on investor assistance rather than investment advice as was initially conceived. Atura has since undergone a fruitful three-year product development phase with investment, insurance, and lending clients.

“We wanted to overcome connectivity issues and facilitate a higher degree of transparency in the finance sector, whil reducing the operational costs of client support for businesses.

Accessing information via the call center or browsing the banks’ data-rich websites can be a costly exercise for customers,” says Paul Cartmel, CEO at Atura.

Today, the company is able to fulfil the needs of customer by saving mobile data and providing immediate solutions for their queries. The digital assistant automatically engages with customers and responds to the most common requests.

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AI powers customer engagement The AI-based chatbot assists customers in gaining access to relevant information at any phase of their financial journey However, Atura not only helps customers, it also brings value to call center consultants. The assistant can be used as an internal knowledge management tool, elevating the efficacy and level service consultants are able to provide.

“Through the course of research and development, we realized that there was a certain 80/20 rule. But it was more like a 95/5 rule, where there were really only about 10 core requests that were coming through to the call center 95 percent of the time. People simply wanted to get a fact sheet or see fund pricing, fund performance, or the risk profile of the fund, for example These were such easy questions to answer that it only made sense to automate them,” recalls Cartmel. The Atura chatbot has the potential to save clients 90 percent of call center costs.

The chatbot can interact with customers through various messaging apps that they use, and often have special data plans for. These applications are intrinsically data light, allowing Atura to directly address the need for a cost-effective customer suppor

model that also works in areas with limited connectivity. As a result, in situations where human interaction is required, Atura provides a smooth transition to a live agent in the chat channel of the client’s choice.

The Atura digital assistant can also be designed to personify a client’s brand through the language and tone it assumes. Its platform, built on Microsoft Azure AI infrastructure, seamlessly integrates with existing systems and allows for advanced customization of workflows and interaction points, thus openin up all transactional customer interactions to the client.

Atura and Language Understanding (LUIS) accurately collate, then translate chat data into a usable form for Atura’s linguistics specialists and NLP programmers. This data is used to inform future adjustments, ensuring the NLP engine and the chatbot improve over time.

Advanced chatbot needs trusted platform The Atura security model has been vetted by several banks and financial firms and confirmed as highly secure. The chat service has end-to-end data encryption and is secured through all layers of the architecture including the database, where conversation logs and metadata are stored. It also uses the same verification protocols used by call center agents to disce n customer identity.

“Our experience working with Microsoft has advanced our technical capabilities for digital assistant development and deep integration into financial services systems. Our team has bee given expertise in conversational user experience best practices, a well-tested toolkit for rapidly prototyping conversational fl ws, and a deep understanding of natural language processing― all in all a thorough understanding of what makes chatbots succeed in the real world, and what doesn’t,” says Cartmel.

In choosing the foundational technology for Atura, Microsoft stood out from its competitors. Its pricing models, broad offering, flexibility, and geographic infrastructure made even more attractive. “Microsoft’s Cognitive Services include a powerful Natural Language Processing engine as well as facial and voice recognition which we leverage for voice-based logins.

These are all very robust technologies and will give us longevity down the line,” he adds.

Atura also benefited from Microsoft Bot Framewor compatibility with 16 different chat channels. “After doing ou research, we found a number of core components that are critical for a good digital assistant solution: a powerful Natural Language Processing (NLP) engine, robust cognitive services and context engine, and a framework that takes care of the chat Continued on page 76

INTELLIGENT SPEND MANAGEMENT:

the key to accelerating business performance

In today’s global economy, business leaders are constantly under pressure to drive optimal levels of performance across their entire organisational value chain. This is partly due to the increasing complexity of the modern business world, in addition to the growing expectations of always-connected customers. Today more than ever, business leaders need the ability to respond to a growing set of challenges with agility and accuracy. The balancing act of managing spend – particularly balancing growth and spend control – is a major tussle for modern C-suite executives.

By Rudeon Snell, Director: Intelligent Enterprise Solutions – EMEA South at SAP

4TH QUARTER 2019

REMAINING RESPONSIVE to business needs while focusing on optimising performance, especially when it comes to organisational spend, is key. Growth, innovation and new business capabilities are continually pressured by risk appetite.

In today’s unpredictable world, one of the key approaches to helping leaders balance and drive higher levels of business value, is to adopt a real-time Intelligent Spend Management strategy.

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The evolving world of Intelligent Spend Management The task of spend management is expanding in scope and complexity. Increased data volumes, decentralisation and overall spend are giving rise to spend solutions, processes and data that gravitate toward the formation of organisational spend silos. Often this leaves CFOs blind, with no clear visibility over spend across the total organisational ecosystem. What’s more, organisations are under pressure to optimise their spend and invest in areas of growth. This has created the need for a new mandate, especially for finance functions withi global organisations. CEOs nowadays mandate that Finance, Procurement, IT and Supply Chain leaders collaboratively explore new ways of optimising spend management across the enterprise.

What is clear is that how an organisation spends its money matters, now more than ever before. The pace of change, the need for adaptability, and the requirement to constantly evolve in order to meet customer expectations means that making the best strategic decisions around spend is an absolute necessity for survival. And making those decisions effectively is onl possible when connecting all sources of spend, with full visibility and insight of that spend, across the entire enterprise.

Realising value from Intelligent Spend Management Most organisations have spend functions concentrated within certain spend silos. This creates a challenge for CFOs, who have to ensure optimal spend management regardless of which silos are under-performing. Employees are making organisational

spend decisions with less and less oversight, using a wide range of payment methods, which often poses a risk to total spend visibility, governance and compliance, efficiency a controls. For example, travel and expenses are generally one of the largest areas of spend for a company, outside of capital expenses, and often this category of spend is entirely left to individual employees.

Employees traveling to a new location creates logistical challenges for businesses. Companies have to plan for how many days a foreigner can work in the country before paying local income taxes. They must make sure all spend is aligned to company policy, especially when policy and local customs are at odds, or when the receipt is in another language.

The sad reality is that most technology vendor solutions are ill-equipped to address spend management across the various spend silos. This lack of effective spend managemen through technology solutions often result in fragmented spend visibility, incorrect financial reporting, failin governance and compliance and many other challenges CFOs battle with on a daily basis.

With Intelligent Spend Management, SAP focused on harnessing the collective categories of spend within an organisation, which are often extremely diverse, centralising all spend across all sources. This enables the organisation to manage all spend regardless of category or silo in one place and allows them to capture and apply spend policies consistently to invisible or visible spend. Managing tax and other regulatory requirements becomes easier, and by virtue of having all spend in a centralised location, sourcing best practices can be applied across spend categories, risk management is optimised, and saving negotiation is amplified This leads to better rates and terms within contracts for the organisation. The key philosophy powering this approach is that when CFOs have full visibility over an organisation’s total spend, they can control costs better, can authorise investment better and make more accurate strategic decisions regarding organisational spend.

“

“One of the easiest ways to kick start your Intelligent Spend Management journey and accelerate the realisation of business value is to connect travel and expense spending with all other employee expenses...”

- Rudeon Snell, Director: Intelligent Enterprise Solutions – EMEA South at SAP

”

4TH QUARTER 2019

Intelligent Spend Management journey, the customer was able to meet their objectives of empowering their financ team to see where spend is happening, to easily find insight and ensure policy compliance, to reduce back office time, a especially track and monitor VAT spend so it could be reclaimed efficientl One of the biggest financial services institutions on th African continent, with presence in multiple Africa countries, also embarked on a similar journey using SAP Concur as their first step into Intelligent Spend Management. Thei finance team regularly processes upwards of 50,000 expens reports annually, all of which were processed manually. As can be imagined, the sheer volume of the paper storage was overwhelming, not even mentioning the complete lack of insight into travel spend and overall reporting of it.

With SAP Concur implemented, they are now able to reduce reimbursement time by nearly 50%, travel agency booking fees have been reduced by nearly 60% and visibility into travel spending provides ability to negotiate volume vendor/supplier discounts.

Intelligent Spend Management is no longer a luxury that is the reserve of the multinational conglomerate. Intelligent Spend Management today is an absolute business-critical capability to ensure long term sustainability in the modern economy.

Businesses small and large are able to reap the benefit of optimised spend management, starting their Intelligent Spend Management journey with SAP Concur and allowing for improved strategic decision making on growth and spend, across the entire enterprise, all powered by consistent, trusted, intelligence. ai

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Reimagining Spend Management in today’s digital world SAP’s approach to bringing Intelligent Spend Management to life for customers is rooted in driving a holistic business outcomes approach for organisational spend management. This is achieved by combining three key line of business solutions SAP Concur, SAP Fieldglass and SAP Ariba - to offer customer the strategic capability of an end-to-end spend management service across all spend categories whether it’s direct, indirect, services, travel or expenses. Organisations that adopt a strategic approach to Intelligent Spend Management often realise business value much quicker than those who do not, especially around metrics such as organisational spend visibility, total employee spend, governance and compliance, spend optimisation, and accelerating vendor payments.

One of the easiest ways to kick start your Intelligent Spend Management journey and accelerate the realisation of business value is to connect travel and expense spending with all other employee expenses, especially as spending becomes more decentralised. This approach often empowers finance team to strategically control all employee spend for this category with added benefits such as the ability to optimise invoic management, policy adherence and enforcement, governance and compliance, process automation and efficiencie automating invoice matching against purchase orders as well as goods and services received.

For example, a fortune 500 SAP customer in the logistics industry with offices in 24 countries wanted to improve the ability to manage employee spend especially with regards to international and domestic travel. The challenges posed by the existing landscape were numerous, with the paper-based travel and expense process presenting three key problems for the company’s finance team The first was a lack of visibility into total spend. Secondly this lack of visibility meant there was also a concern around compliance. And thirdly, the team handles upward of 200 claims per month and deals with multiple currencies and regulations, which made foreign VAT reclamation an extremely timeconsuming manual process. While these issues had been a concern for a while, the introduction of VAT in the region made matters even more pressing and complex.

With SAP Concur as a foundational first step in thei

ZINDI LAUNCHES NEW MACHINE Learning Challenge to Improve Road Safety in Cape Town

4TH QUARTER 2019

In South Africa, approximately 1-million road accidents are reported each year, resulting in approximately 31.9 fatalities per 100,000 people each year. This fatality rate could be dramatically reduced by ensuring that authorities are able to respond to reported incidents as quickly and efficiently as possible.

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ZINDI HAS recently launched a new competition with Uber and SANRAL to improve road safety in Cape Town, South Africa. The objective of this challenge is to build a machine learning model that accurately predicts when and where the next road incident will occur on the highways in Cape Town.

Data scientists on Zindi will build their models using historic road incident data from SANRAL as well as traffic pattern data from Uber Movement. The resulting model will enable South African authorities to anticipate where they will be needed next and to put measures in place that will help ensure the safety of all Cape Town’s residents.

This challenge was kicked off with a hackathon hoste by the Launch Lab in Stellenbosch on 12 October where 60 keen data science enthusiasts spent a day immersed in the problem. Marcus Gawronsky from University of Cape Town came in first place; Matthew Baas, Ryan Seebregts and Kevi Eloff from Stellenbosch University came in second place; an Thembisile Damon, Xolisa Mzini, Siphesihle Yapi and Thabiso Mareletsa of Explore Data Science Academy came in third place. The winners of the hackathon were invited to present their insights at the official launch of the Uber Movement Cape Town on 29 October. This competition is open on Zindi until 3 February 2019 with $5,500 USD in prizes.

Zindi also recently launched a new challenge for non-profit organization AI4D (Artificial Intelligence f

Development) to uncover new datasets of underrepresented indigenous African languages for natural language processing (NLP). Every month for five month (from November 2019 to March 2020), the two best dataset will win a prize of $500 USD each. The objective of this challenge is the creation, curation, and collation of high quality African language datasets for a specific NLP tasks Zindi and AI4D hope to run task-specific NLP challenge using these dataset next year and also plan to make all of the datasets publicly available on Zindi.

Zindi recently closed its Soil Moisture Prediction Challenge in partnership with IoT non-profit organization Waziup wit prizes sponsored by Microsoft. Waziup is in contact with the top five winners and are exploring taking the solution forwar to enable farmers to anticipate water needs and prepare their irrigation schedules. Competition was fierce with nearly 70 data scientists enrolled in this challenge. The top five winner received $4,000 USD in cash prizes and/or their very own IoT kits to build their own IoT applications.

Launched in September 2018, Zindi has launched 27 challenges and has facilitated over $60,000 USD worth of prizes.

Zindi is the largest online community of African data scientists with over 8,000 data scientists registered on the platform and interaction across the entire continent.

For more on Zindi, visit: www.zindi.africa ai

Have you unlocked the value of your data?

We may be living longer, but our businesses are dying younger. In 1964 the average lifespan of a listed American company was 33 years; that number is predicted to fall to just 12 years by 2027, according to a recent study by Innosight. Much of the corporate carnage is a result of rapidly changing consumer needs, and the speed at which new competitors will capitalise on any opportunity you give them.

4TH QUARTER 2019

THAT THE world is changing faster than ever before is obvious. How to understand what changes are happening and what you should do about them is less clear. Business leaders everywhere are increasingly looking to the data their companies generate for answers; hidden in those ones and zeros are patterns that can help their businesses survive, and thrive.

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Is that sand you’re building on?

The proliferation of data, and the value concealed within it, has spawned the Data Science industry. This relatively new breed of worker takes your data and extracts insights you can use to make better decisions. Like any scientist though, the viability of their conclusions depends on the quality of the inputs they use, in this case, data.

It would be splendid if data presented itself in an orderly fashion. But it doesn’t. The number of different systems that data is housed in, the numerous formats in which it is captured, and its sheer volume growth make it wild and wandering in nature. Before it can be analysed, data must be organised.

Getting data ready for analysis is not a new problem, and solutions already exist. Most are rules-based

programming fixes. But as data complexity ratchets upwards, so the number of rules will need to increase, as well as the time and money spent on developing them. A day will come where data becomes too beastly for humans to control on their own. Thankfully, there is a better way — and it involves using powerful machines.

Data that helps you Imagine you had a consolidated view of your customers and what they’d bought from you; would you be able to sell them more? Imagine you could see exactly what you’ve been buying from which suppliers and at what cost; could you save money with that information? What if you knew your business better than competitors knew their own; do you think it would help you survive, thrive?

No matter the scale, diversity and complexity of your data, getting a unified view of your customers, suppliers, stock, people, and subsidiaries is now possible with the help of machine learning.

The future is automated Instead of relying on intensive human driven instruction, DataSeed employs a unique machine learning process to intelligently unify enterprise data at scale into one easily accessible master record, identifying, for example, that Lerato Ngidi in one system is the same as L. Ngidi in another, even if there is no unique identifier.

Because the DataSeed algorithms ‘learn’, the engine classifies your data more accurately as time passes, reducing the need for human interaction in your data unification efforts. This will give you more time to make decisions critical to the sustainability and prosperity of your business using clean, reliable data. ai Contact Data Seed for a demo and to explore how we can help you unlock the value hidden in your data: Murray Kuiper murray@dataseed.ai +27 72 212 4000 www.dataseed.ai

AI FOR A SINGLE CUSTOMER VIEW AP I

MICHAEL SANCHEZ

DATASEED DB AI ENGINE

Michael Sanchez 724 350 4487 80 Spruce Drive, PA

Mike Sanchez 724 350 4487 80 Spruce Drive, Pennsylvania

CRM

ERP

DataSeed’s machine learning engine combined with human expertise, unifies your data into one, easily accessible and up-to-date version of the truth, transforming disparate data into a valuable business asset.

To schedule a demo, contact: Murray Kuiper E: murray@dataseed.ai | C: +27 72 212 4000 www.dataseed.ai

Mikey Sanchez 724 350 4497 80 Spruce Road, PA

APP

CAPETOWN AI SEEKS

Wildlife Reserve for ‘AI for Wildlife’ Project

CapeTown AI are looking for a Wildlife reserve that wants to innovate with the power of hashtag #drones and hashtag#AI! We & FruitPunch AI are setting up ‘AI for Wildlife, combining the knowledge of Dutch universities, the power of an international AI community and experience of startups to take on the poaching problem in South Africa by collecting data in the Wildlife reserves!

4TH QUARTER 2019

www.capetownai.com

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N W O T E P CA

K E E W TECH

Cape Town, Western Cape – Africa’s leading digital hub. A place with a world-class digital ecosystem, where resources and talent meet commercial and social opportunity.

Amazon chooses Cape Town.

The Western Cape has worldclass tech skills and capabilities.

Cape Town is the only AWS region in Africa.

Cape Town / Stellenbosch tech ecosystem employs more than Lagos and Nairobi combined.* (Source: endeavor analysis 2018)

Naspers, Africa’s highest valued tech giant is based in Cape Town.

½ of the top universities in Africa

are from SA, with 3 located in the Western Cape.*

Cape Town is ranked

30

cities in the top at the forefront of global tech.*

(Source: QS World Ranking 2019)

Cape Town has

25

(Source: Saville consulting 2019)

co-working more than spaces and more than

20 local and

The Cape Innovation & Technology Initiative (CiTi) is one of the oldest tech incubators on the continent.

international accelerators.

Cape Town has the lion’s share of the headquarters of majority of new startups in the e-commerce ecosystem in SA. The Western Cape has widespread fibre networks and

4G coverage with 5G being rolled out.

The Western Cape is connected to the world via multiple submarine cable networks.

Open access data centres and global cloud services

6th most affordable city compared with 30 top global tech cities.

Cape Town is the

(Source: Saville consulting 2019)

AI Expo Africa was fortunate enough to be invited to Level UP as an African Artificia Intelligence community event.

Microsoft Host Level UP for new ISVs

4TH QUARTER 2019

Microsoft hosted its very first Level UP event in Johannesburg on Wednesday, 27 November, with a strong focus on AI.

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“AIMED AT attracting new ISVs to Microsoft, it was a resounding success with 150 CxO attendees learning about one of our best kept secrets – our value proposition in helping ISV partners accelerate their growth. The audience members were highly engaged with a great line up of Microsoft and ISVs making the partnership experience real and bringing home how much they value their relationship with Microsoft,” said Rochelle Mountany Strategic Partner Recruit, MEA - Independent Software Vendors.

“Many commented on how they now see Microsoft as the right business partner for them, where previously they only thought of us as a technology company. The ISV panel was especially popular with each partner detailing their own journey with Microsoft and citing examples of how instrumental we have been in their success, especially in these tough economic times. In the following two days, we have had many requests from mature new ISVs to enrol on the partner programme. Our postevent survey resulted in either 9s or 10s on the question ‘How likely are you

to recommend Microsoft as a platform of choice after this event’.”

“An event of this size and impact does not happen in isolation, thank you for your partnership and your continued support! We hope to repeat this event in more key MEA territories to accelerate our ISV motion and capture those innovative, mature solutions that will assist us as we enable our customers in their digital transformation journey,” said Rochelle. ai

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4TH QUARTER 2019

XIB SOLUTIONS IMPLEMENT

Powerful, Pre-emptive Solutions that Evolve with Your Business

4TH QUARTER 2019

In this rapidly changing world, businesses need preemptive solutions – solutions to future problems, implemented in the present. Automation is not something you buy off the shelf. It needs to address the most pressing needs of your business. Only when solutions are in sync with the heartbeat of your business do they provide the innovative leaps that success in the modern world requires.

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FOR THE last 10 years, XIB has successfully developed and supported tailor-made solutions for large enterprise clients – boasting a client portfolio that includes Vodacom, SARS, IBM, Nelson Education (Canada) and MSL (Zambia).

Our personal approach safeguards existing IT infrastructures, synchronising web applications with the dynamic nature of the real-world. As an official UI Path partner, we offer cutting-edge tools.

But the right tools alone do not help clients make the most of opportunities to automate. This requires knowledge and a discerning eye. We provide the expertise to leverage top-end technology for greatest impact. Our bespoke support evolves solutions in tandem with the needs of our clients. Our focus on partnership is a core element of our product offering, ensuring the long-term effectiveness of the solutions we create.

XIB’s product offering consists of six core elements: Outsourced Development: We manage the development process in an integrated way – becoming an extension of our customers’ development arm. We establish and maintain the skills needed to sustain the development we implement.

Integration and Middleware: We have in-depth experience in integrating software

services that span across a range of industries. We have a proven record of successfully implementing a range of enterprise frameworks.

Web Applications: We specialise in web applications with a specific focus o internal enterprise web applications that integrate with local software services. Our designs are simple and intuitive.

Application Support: With our three-tier support service, along with a help desk service, our aim is to rapidly respond to and solve problems before they reach the customer’s screen.

Manual and Automated Testing: Manual and automated testing services include endto-end and regression tests. Our testing process aligns with the Agile methodology and can be scaled according to the requirements of each client.

Consultation and Mentoring: Our consulting and mentoring services represent a combination of experience and true care. These services range from friendly advice to an analysis of the unique development process and technology stack your business needs.

XIB Solutions was at the AI Expo Africa 2019. If you missed an opportunity to meet our team and find out how a partnership with XIB can transform your business, visit our website: www.xibsolutions.com ai

THE POWER OF ETHICAL ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE We give you the power of ethical artificial intelligence to turn your big data into smart data and make important decisions at lightning speed.

OMINA TECHNOLOGIES Omina Technologies is an ethical artificial intelligence company active in Europe, the US and Africa. Artificial Intelligence will transform everything from the stock market, to the energy and health care sectors, to the battle against climate change. In the retail space, AI will change the way companies approach customer expectations. Companies that implement artificial intelligence will understand their customer better allowing them to compete in an increasingly globalized market. At Omina Technologies we believe in leveraging artificial intelligence in an ethical way. We believe that artificial intelligence should be available to companies big and small. We believe that artificial intelligence should be explainable and transparent. We believe in handling data ethically and with respect for privacy. Ethical artificial intelligence is inherent in all of our AI products and services.

OUR SERVICES OMINA CORE We have developed an artificial intelligence platform combining cutting edge technology with ethical artificial intelligence principles. Companies with less data can utilize the benefits of artificial intelligence thanks to our revolutionary approach. Our user-friendly platform gives companies big and small across different sectors the ability to use AI simply and easily. Our platform works within your environment and therefore we do not take data out of its natural habitat. You can rest easy knowing we are handling your data ethically and with respect. We offer the ability to audit your algorithms and see how they have evolved over time so that you have the peace of mind that your AI is explainable and ha transparent.

OMINA ACADEMY We provide trainings for companies that want to expand their knowledge of artificial intelligence. Omina Academy provides various hands-on trainings. We give trainings that will help you understand how artificial intelligence is being used in your sector and how it can be utilized within your company. In addition we offer executive management seminars to help management understand this exciting technology and more importantly, how to leverage it within their company.

OMINA CONSULTANCY We offer strategic consultancy services to companies wanting to leverage artificial intelligence and who want to move forward in a strategic and structured way that aligns with their future vision. Our “Artificial Intelligence Readiness Assessment� helps companies understand better how they can leverage artificial intelligence, how to position AI strategically, and their strengths and weaknesses. We help them create a strategic roadmap for the future. In addition we provide artificial intelligence engineers, big data engineers, DevOps engineers, big data analysts and project managers specialised in data with experience on a multitude of platforms and proficient in different technologies ready to help your company.

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4TH QUARTER 2019

Consumer expectations are becoming more demanding every day, and AI is seen as core technology across Telco’s digital transformation journey, especially for its ability to automate the processes.

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WHILE MANY operators are working on cost optimization initiatives, in fact, successful telco future lies in the ability to leverage existing assets and go beyond traditional services.

Few transformation areas are impacting revenue growth and customer experience management the most: • Data centricity: making the value of a unified customer or household data.

• 360-degree omnichannel customer experience management.

• Expanding the portfolio of own and partner services for upsell and cross-sell.

There are many AI solutions designed for improving customer experience management in the market, but only a few can qualify to serve specific and complex telco needs. Operating in the Telco industry for nearly a decade across the globe, we help companies to provide seamlessly integrated experiences to

customers on their phones every day, as well as to increase user loyalty and reduce churn rate.

Cutting edge AI-powered technology can serve numerous needs that range from tracking customer or household data across all touchpoints, to delivering precise automated recommendations based on hundreds of telco metrics.

We provide end-to-end AI solutions helping telecoms and retailers worldwide to address key marketing, personalization and customer experience challenges for nearly a decade.

Exacaster platforms enable to enhance consumer experiences across all touchpoints and improve decision making based on big data, machine learning and predictive analytics. Every day we reach 40 million customers in Europe and Americas.

Coming from the heart of Europe.

We are located in Lithuania, the country of fintech startups and lasers, Europe’s no. 1 in fiber-optic internet penetration and one of the fastest WIFI in the world.

In September Exacaster enjoyed exhibiting our end-to-end AI solutions for telco customers at AI EXPO Africa in Cape Town. ai

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CIRRUS AI: A New AI Research Initiative for Africa A Collaborative Partnership Between WITS School of Chemistry & Cortex Group

4TH QUARTER 2019

DEPUTY VICE-Chancellor: Research and Postgraduate Affairs, Professor Zeblon Vilakazi, announced and introduced the Cirrus AI Initiative at AI Expo Africa 2019 – a new Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Operation in Africa, that will see a collaborative partnership between the Molecular Sciences Institute (MSI), University of the Witwatersrand (WITS)’s School of Chemistry and Cortex Group.

Hosted by MSI in the WITS School of Chemistry, the newly formed Cirrus AI Initiative will focus on the analysis of research data in chemistry, with a view to collaborate with physics, technology and engineering projects – using Machine Learning (ML). Professor Zeblon Vilakazi said, “WITS is one of the leading institutions in Machine Learning and Data Science research in Africa. This collaboration will boost the WITS’s efforts, as it envisions a step change in the research and application of AI in the region.”

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Advances in AI, and its application in addressing Africa’s challenges, have the potential to drive innovation in academia and industry, as well as shape future societies.

There is a growing need for talent, infrastructure and funding to support such innovation – and, to fully realise the opportunities presented in our technology and datadrive world.

Vilakazi stressed, that to become competitive in this new wave of innovation requires efforts in South Africa on a magnitude far greater than any previous endeavour spanning academia and industry. These efforts are fuelled

by AI and the 4th Industrial Revolution, as well as access to substantial resources and investment in new technologies across North America, Europe and Asia.

Cirrus AI aims to create a collaborative university and industry platform, supporting an ecosystem that fosters innovation and entrepreneurialism. As the host university, WITS will lead the Cirrus AI Initiative’s cooperation efforts

“Their team has been at the forefront of collaborative AI efforts in Africa and by working with Wits and Cirrus will be able to unlock even more opportunities.”

Death” – the challenge of turning a start-up idea or scientific research into a large-scale commercial application.

The Cirrus Initiative will also initiate several research assistance programmes, including: (1) A Research to Communication Programme, (2) Open Learning Programme, (3) Residency Programme, (4) PhD Internship Programme, (5) Post-Doctorate Programme and (6) Assistantship Programme. ai

The Cirrus AI Initiative includes: The creation of a cooperation program: Supporting interdisciplinary cooperation spanning academia and industry around the world through its network, boosting the application of AI technologies and ensuring the transformative potential benefits for the region Adding State-of-art computing to the current research

For more information, please visit: www.wits.ac.za / www.cirrusai.net

4TH QUARTER 2019

infrastructure: Supported by teams of hardware, software, machine learning and data engineers. It will bring together engineering teams, researchers, computing infrastructure and extensive scientific instrumentation to enable a step change i research efforts of academia and industry in the region Building Open Learning: Ensuring inclusive participation, the dissemination of knowledge and ideas and the development of the next generation of AI researchers.

The Cirrus FOUNDRY and Cirrus FOUNDRY Fund: The Cirrus FOUNDRY will create a collaborative environment connecting start-ups to students, researchers, faculty, corporate partners and capital concerned with real world AI innovation. It will ensure that start-ups have the necessary resources, people and skills to better tackle the challenging problems across a range of industries and drive innovation toward significant impact on society.

Importantly, the Cirrus FOUNDRY will specialise in fostering support for early stage innovations and in helping start-ups make the transition from science to real world application. Through the Cirrus FOUNDRY Fund, funding provided to start-ups will ensure that they are not wholly dependent on outside capital and will increase the shortterm success of the start-up by bridging the “Valley of

49 SYNAPSE

with universities, institutes, Centres of Excellence and research groups in Africa. While Cirrus AI will initially focus on the research and application of AI in chemical, physical and biological systems, its capability will be extended to the benefit of other fields to foster the growth of a stron scientific ecosystem on the continent. Numerous direct and indirect employment opportunities for scientists and engineers will also be created.

“Combining Africa’s vibrant talent with the building of a globally competitive platform for leading scientific research and application, will drive innovation and undoubtedly foster economic development in the region. In our pursuit of knowledge creation, it is also critical that Africans are the contributors, shapers and owners of the coming advances in artificial intelligence and machine learning,” continued Vilakazi.

Dr Jacques Ludik, Founder and Executive Chairman of Cortex Group said, “As part of the effort to foster collaboration, Cortex Group have entered into a cooperation agreement with the Cirrus AI Initiative to lead the establishment of Cirrus FOUNDRY Cape, an operation focused on developing start-ups and helping them move from ideation to commercial operation.” Vilakazi continued,

4TH QUARTER 2019

4IRI

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4IRI (Fourth Industrial Revolution Incubator) is a business Incubator which has supportive Mini-Hubs within Gauteng and Western Cape. Our model is strategically designed to enable the creation of Small and Medium Sized businesses through incubation, offering continued entrepreneurial support.

4IRI creates and enables start-up businesses in key industries that will power the 4th industrial revolution.

The WHY… Across the globe disruptive technologies such as advanced robotics, the ‘internet of things’, Artificia Intelligence, cloud technology, nanotechnology, big data, virtual reality and increased concerns around cyber security have catapulted us into the 4th Industrial Revolution aptly called Industry 4.0 (I.4.0).

Unfortunately, South Africa is experiencing a technical recession, with massive skills shortages in critical areas of the economy which support new growth, such as technology and innovation. The dire need for skills will only worsen in the medium and long term. For the NDP 2030 to meet its’s objectives, it is imperative that we

equip South African youth with the new skills required to participate in the workforce. This can only be achieved by significant and sustained investment in education training and capacity building.

The MISSION… We strive to create an ecosystem that develops future talented SME’s to tackle an ever-disruptive future.

Fourth Industrial Revolution Incubator directly meets the objectives of the National Development Plan 2030 “by drawing on the energies of its people, growing an inclusive economy, building capabilities, enhancing the capacity of the state, and

The WHO… If you are interested in augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), data science, blockchain and creative programming solutions, then this is an opportunity you should not miss. We are looking for ambitious candidates, motivated by their desire to start their own tech infused businesses within these Industries:

The 2 STEP….

Step 1: Fill out the application form on www.4iri.co.za Step 2: Successful candidates will be notified and given furthe information pertaining to the 4IRIncubation Boot Camp.

The WHAT, The WIN, The GOAL… Once you start your journey with us we will make use of our internal resources and leverage off our extensiv network to offer them Equipment, Business and Marketing Plans, Expert Facilitators, Access to ecosystem, Access to market, Access to Technologies, Project Development, Accredited UAV training, Business Matchmaking, Plug into ecosystem and networking events… and so much more.

“Any Society that does not succeed In tapping Into the energy and creativity of Its youth will be left behind.” Kofi Annan ai

4TH QUARTER 2019

The HOW… Every country embracing the 4IR understands that a platform needs to be created that would allow for more coordinated collaboration and development. We want to cultivate a culture of learning and exploration which to Innovative Ideas which In turn will be converted Into business success supported by our government.

South Africa will exponential growth within the 4IR market once we create and utilise a nexus between the markets and funders.

Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Drones and autonomous vehicles.

Artificial Intelligenc Learning industries Internet Of Things Cloud Computing Education 3D Printing Big Data

51 SYNAPSE

promoting leadership and partnerships throughout society.”

We strive to stimulate innovation, create employment and entrepreneurship opportunities, and encourage skilled individuals entering the South African 4IR Market.

We therefor look forward to helping South Africans embrace the opportunities the Fourth Industrial Revolution presents.

&

Exciting Companies, Insightful Talks

Buzzing Atmosphere – AI Expo Africa 2019 Review

4TH QUARTER 2019

CHRISTOPHER WRITES, “As a statistics masters student finishing off my project this year, interest was immediately piqued when the call for abstracts were sent out for the 2019 AI Expo Africa. A conference purely focused on the field of AI, machine learning, busines intelligence and all things in between was the perfect opportunity to showcase my work to industry.

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To be honest, I had never heard of the AI Expo Africa conference before this year, although this is likely because I study in Port Elizabeth and not a corporate hub like Cape Town or Johannesburg. I quickly realised that I had been living under a rock for the past few years, as there is an active and lively community following events such as these.

My experience at the expo was nothing short of profound. The event organisers did an amazing job of ensuring that a wide variety of topics were covered at the expo. Although the expo is industry focused, I still gained a lot of useful information by attending the talks. Besides the exhaustive list of vendors, companies and speakers at the event, there

was ample opportunity provided to network. I also met recruiters and industry professionals who were able to give me industry specifi advice on getting into the job market.

Understanding the value one can add to a company with a data science related degree has made me a better applicant and has consequently opened a lot of doors for me.

My only (small) gripe about the event

was the timing of when the students were requested to be at the MTN Innovation Wall in order to field questions regarding thei posters. Unfortunately, what transpired was that if we left our stands during the tea break to get food, someone would inevitably come to our poster and we would not be present to answer questions.

Although a small issue, I would ask that the organisers of the event consider adding an allocated time in the programme purely for students to showcase their work. If time in the programme is a precious commodity (which I suspect it is), limiting the poster presentations to one specific day may als solve this problem.

By Christopher Dunderdale, Winner of the MTN Innovation Poster Competition at AI Expo Africa. Chris is a final year statistics masters student at the Nelson Mandela University in Port Elizabeth. His current academic focus is in the area of renewable energy and artificial intelligence which is being used to build photovoltaic analytical systems.

His current academic focus is in the area of renewable energy and artificial intelligence which is being used to build photovoltaic analytical systems. His work, funded by NRF, SASA and Nelson Mandela University using AI to detect faults in PV panels, was presented at the MTN Innovation Wall, a joint initiative between AI Media and MTN to showcase applied, academic R&D applicable to industry or possible investment.

His poster was voted by the delegates as the best of show.

& Photovoltaic Defect Classification through Thermal Infrared Imagery using a Deep Learning Approach Christopher Dunderdale Supervisors: Dr WJ Brettenny, Dr CM Clohessy and Prof. E.E. van Dyk Nelson Mandela University

Introduction

Owing to the ever-increasing global energy demand, the need to implement safe and sustainable energy generation has become of great importance to policy makers. Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems, amongst others, have emerged as a leading renewable energy resource to generate power in an environmentally conscious manner. There is a growing need to automate the process of identifying and classifying PV module defects, as manual inspection is simply not viable, especially in large scale plants with millions of operational modules. Defects in PV modules can be aerially identified using infrared thermal cameras as seen in Figure 1. This study proposes the use of two deep learning architectures with transfer learning for defect detection and classification in PV systems using infrared thermal images.

Bag of Visual Words Model Taking inspiration from text sentiment analysis, Csurka et al. (2004) [2] developed the bag of visual words model as a means for vector quantization of features such as SIFT descriptors. The vector quantization or dictionary of visual words can be computed as follows: 1. Keypoints and features for all images in question are calculated and quantized into k visual words using an appropriate algorithm such as k nearest neighbours.

2. In every image, detected keypoints are allocated to one of the k visual words to form a histogram detailing the number of occurrences of each visual word.

The histograms generated by the bag of visual words model can the be used as a feature vector in machine learning algorithms.

This study aims to achieve the following: • Evaluate the effectiveness of feature-based models and deep learning techniques for the detection and classification of defects in PV systems.

• Identify image augmentation techniques which significantly improve model performances.

Data Collection

Fig 2: The Design of the Depthwise Convolution Operation used by the MobileNet Model [4]

Results Predicted

NonDefective

Defective

NonDefective

90%

10%

Defective

8%

92%

Table 1: Confusion Matrix for Defect Detection using the Bag of Visual Words Model and a Random Forest Classifier

Observed

Predicted

Thermal image data of 398 singular defective and 400 singular non-defective PV modules from three different PV plants were obtained. Due to non-disclosure agreements, the location of the sites cannot be disclosed. Defects in the PV modules can be broadly categorised into one of five categories:

Block

Patchwork

Single

Block

99%

0%

1%

String

0%

Patchwork

0%

65%

18%

17%

Single

4%

6%

90%

0%

String

3%

21%

7%

69%

Table 2: Confusion Matrix for Defect Classification using the MobileNet Model using Horizontal and Vertical Image Flipping as Data Augmentation.

Block

String

Patchwork

Due to lack of data, the soiling defect category was left out of the analysis. The bag of visual words approach achieved a 91% defect detection accuracy whereas the MobileNet model achieved a 89% defect classification accuracy. While the MobileNet model does struggle to identify patchwork defects, it performs remarkably well given the small dataset. With regards to data augmentation, vertical and horizontal flipping, image rotation and combinations thereof were tested when implementing the models. The results showed that flipping images both vertically and horizontally yielded the best results.

Conclusions and Recommendations Single

Soiling

Methodology

A sizeable component of this study is the identification of appropriate features to use in classification procedures. The following techniques are proposed: SIFT Descriptors: Proposed by Lowe (2004) [1], SIFT descriptors produce features for images which are invariant to scale and rotation. The SIFT algorithm comprises of the following steps: 1. Scale-Space Extrema Detection: Using methods such as the Laplace of Gaussian. Areas of rapid change at various resolutions are detected and labelled as keypoints.

2. Thresholding: For the purposes of increased accuracy, non-significant keypoints such as low contrast edges are removed.

3. Orientation Assignment: A neighborhood around each keypoint is calculated to determine the orientation and scale of the keypoint.

4. Keypoint Description: A 16 block grid is placed around the keypoint wherein a n-bin orientation histogram is calculated for each sub-block.

Presented at the 2019 AI Expo Africa, Cape Town, South Africa.

Despite a small dataset, the approach of this study shows promise in its preliminary stages for defect analysis in PV modules. With the addition of forthcoming data, these results can only improve. The study also plans to investigate the use of deep learning techniques for defect detection. The successful implementation of this approach has significant potential for cost reduction in fault analysis over currently available techniques.

References

1. D Lowe: 2004, Distinctive image features from scale-invariant keypoints. International Journal of Computer Vision.

2. G Csurka et al.: 2004, Visual Categorization with Bags of Keypoints. European Conference on Computer Vision.

3. A Howard et al.: 2017, Mobilenets: Efficient convolutional neural networks for mobile vision applications. arXiv. URL: arxiv.org/abs/1704.04861. [Date Accessed: 21 May 2019].

4. S Tsang: 2018, Review: MobileNetV1 - Depthwise Separable Convolution (Light Weight Model).

Towards Data Science. URL: towardsdatascience.com/review-mobilenetv1-depthwise-separableconvolution-light-weight-model-a382df364b69. [Date Accessed: 26 August 2019].

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank the NRF, SASA and Nelson Mandela University for their financial support as well the supervisors of this study for their unwavering support.

Statistics Department, Nelson Mandela University

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Fig. 1: An Image of a PV Module with a “Hot Spot” Fault in Red

Objectives

4TH QUARTER 2019

Deep Learning: The subset of deep learning models, namely convolutional neural networks, have shown outstanding capabilities at image recognition tasks, as can be seen by their success in the ImageNet Object Localization competition. This study proposes the use of the MobileNet[3] architecture for classifying defects once it is known that a defect is present. The MobileNet architecture is a suitable candidate for implementing real time analysis due to its computationally efficient depthwise convolution operation.

Observed

While I have this opportunity to describe my experience of the expo, I feel that I must take the time to write a note of thanks to the sponsors and event organisers on behalf of all the students. Accepted students at the expo were given a free pass to the event. Apart from being a significan financial contribution from the sponsors and organisers this allowed us to attend an event we would otherwise not be able to attend. This act of kindness was unexpected, but very much appreciated. From all of us in the student body, we thank you for investing in us and our future in the industry.

Overall, one can only praise the event and its organisers. Everything ran like a well-oiled machine and there was always a willing person to help with any issues.

You can be assured that I will be waxing lyrical about this event for some time to come. As it stands, the 2020 edition of the AI Expo Africa has already been announced and I can’t wait to be back!”

Dr Nick Bradshaw, Co-founder of AI Expo Africa said, “Our long term vision is to build an “AI Economic Pipeline” in Africa – A community that begins with a young learner right through to the biggest global enterprise. The Innovation Wall is one part of this vision and serves as a stepping stone for under-graduates / post-graduates to obtain early exposure to a trade show but also an opportunity to showcase their work to delegates, companies, investors and government agencies. It helps open new doors for the innovators and gain real-world feedback and opportunities to take their work and or career to the next level”. ai

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ROBOCUP:

Advancing the State-of-the-Art in Robotics and AI

4TH QUARTER 2019

RoboCup is the largest competition of autonomous robotics around the world. It has been created twenty years ago by the Artificial Intelligence community, after the defeat of Kasparov against Deep Blue in Chess.

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ROBOCUP CREATORS proposed a new challenge consisting in designing a robots team which can play soccer in a totally autonomous way. Why soccer? Because it offers challenge which are different in nature from the ones propose by chess. Indeed, soccer playing robots must geolocate themselves and their opponents and they have only partial and noisy information from their sensors to do so. They need to take decisions alone. There is no centralization of

the game. Besides this aspect, there is a collective dimension (“robot swarms”): each robot must implement a collective strategy with its own local information, in real-time. Finally, their actions (i.e. walking, shooting the ball, …) are by definition approximate because they are done in the rea world, which is different from a chess board for which ther is no possible ambiguity.

Continued on page 58

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4TH QUARTER 2019

Continued from page 56

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Soccer is the historical challenge of RoboCup and remains the main one today. However, several other challenges have been introduced in the competition: the @Home challenge, in which teams must design a robot assisting people in their home tasks using natural communication (i.e. language and gesture); Rescue, where one must design a robot to help people on a disaster site; the industrial leagues, in which teams have to optimize industrial process with mobile robots.

All these challenges are intended for research teams from all around the world. Each year, 3 000 experts from 50 countries are attending the RoboCup. But the RoboCup is not only reserved to scientists: through the junior leagues, young scholars from high school can compete on simplifie challenges inspired by the main leagues, soccer and rescue.

The RoboCup is not only a yearly competition: it is a real community within which thousands of people from all around the world cooperate, through student exchanges, technology exchanges, regional, national and continental events (e.g. the European RoboCup of the Asia-Pacific RoboCup). First an foremost, the aim of the RoboCup community is to advance the state-of-the-art of autonomous robotics.

Join the RoboCup 2020 in Bordeaux!

The RoboCup 2020 will be the 24th edition of the RoboCup competition.

The RoboCup 2020 is organized by the RoboCup Federation, Bordeaux Métropole, la Région NouvelleAquitaine, l’Université de Bordeaux in collaboration with l’Université de Bretagne Sud. The event dates: June 23rd to June 29th (2 days of training, 4 days of competition and the Symposium on the last day) Where: At the Exhibition Centre of Bordeaux / 20 minutes by tram from Bordeaux city centre / 30.000 m2 of exhibition Participants: 3.500 competitors with their 3.000 robots from 45 different countries / 40.000 visitors expecte Precedents editions: 2019 in Sydney, 2018 in Montréal, 2017 in Nagoya.

To follow the adventure: Instagram : @robocup2020bx Facebook : RoboCup2020bdx Twitter : @robocup2020 Website : robocup.org Major and Junior teams are challenged in 6 leagues of competitions: Soccer league: 2 teams of autonomous robots develop dynamics strategies to confront each other and win the match.

RoboCup Junior RoboCup Major Rescue league: Robots going through natural disaster to bring first aid in trapped victims, evaluating risks an situations.

RoboCup Junior RoboCup Major @Home league: Autonomous and mobile robots interacting with humans. Helping humans in daily tasks at home.

- RoboCup Major Industrial league: Autonomous and mobile robots with industrials arms who cooperate with humans and help us in the future industry - RoboCup Major OnStage league: Robots show designed by juniors’ teams - RoboCup Junior Simulation league: Virtual robots in controlled simulators confronting each other in soccer and rescue challenges.

RoboCup Major RoboCup Junior

USING AI TO PREDICT

Droughts, Floods and Conflic Displacements in Somalia

4TH QUARTER 2019

Building a neural network that predicts the weekly Vegetation Health Index of Somalia with a validation loss of 0.030 and a training loss of 0.005.

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calincan mircea The problem to be solved Millions of people are forced to leave their current area of residence or community due to resource shortage and natural disasters such as droughts, floods. Our challenge partner, UNHCR, provides assistance and protection for those who are forcibly displaced inside Somalia.

The goal of this challenge was to create a solution that quantifies the influence of climate anomalies on force

displacement and/or violent conflict through satellite imagery analysis. The focus was on building models that would help to understand forced displacement, using historical satellite imagery that portrays either climate anomalies/changes in the environment or/and its interrelation with violent conflict If there is a way that conflict correlates to displacement, then what is the observed lag in time? Is there a lag between conflict incidents and observed displacement? Or between the establishment of displaced settlements and environmental degradation?

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FOG (Facts Opinions and Guesses Phase) The most challenging task for this challenge was to find out what is the real data to rely on and how to find it The UNHCR Innovation Team provided the Displacement-Dataset, which contains, Month End, Year Week, Current (Arrival) Region, Current (Arrival) District, Previous (Departure) Region, Previous (Departure) District, Reason, Current (Arrival) Priority Need, Number of Individuals. These internal displacements are weekly recorded since 2016.

While searching for how to extract the data I learned about NDVI (Normalized difference vegetation index), and NDWI (Normalized Difference Water Index). Our focus was on finding a way to apply NDVI and NDWI on satellite imagery; Landsat (EarthExplorer) and MODIS, Hydrology (e.g. river levels, river discharge, an indication of floods/drought) Settlement/shelters GEO (GEO portal). These images have 13 bands and take up around 1GB of storage space per image.

Also, the National Environmental Satellite, Data, and Information Service (NESDIS) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) offer very interesting data l ke Somalia Vegetation Health print screens taken from STAR — Global Vegetation Health Products.

4TH QUARTER 2019

By looking at the picture points I figured that the Vegetation Health Index could be having a correlation with people displacements…

I found an interesting chart, which captured my attention, Go to STAR’s web page.

Click on Data type and select which kind of data you want Check the following image

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4. Click on the region of interest and follow the steps below

VHI index’s weekly since 1984

4TH QUARTER 2019

STAR’s web page provides SMN, SMT, VCI, TCI, VHI index’s weekly since 1984 split in provinces.

SMN= Provincial mean NDVI with noise reduced SMT=Provincial mean brightness Temperature with noice reduced VCI = Vegetation cond index ( VCI <40 indicates moisture stress; VCI >60: favorable condition) TCI= thermal condition Index (TCI <40 indicates thermal stress; TCI >60: favorable condition) VHI =vegetation Health Index (VHI <40 indicates vegetation stress; VHI >60: favorable condition)) Drought vegetation VHI<15 indicates drought from severe-to-exceptional intensity VHI<35 indicates drought from moderate-to-exceptional intensity VHI>65 indicates good vegetation condition VHI>85 indicates very good vegetation condition In order to take the findings to the next level, the following uestions have to be answered.

If conflict correlates to displacement, then what is the observ d lag in time? Is there a lag between conflict incidents and observed displacement or between the establishment of displaced settlements and environmental degradation?

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Correlation between Vegetation Health Index values of Shabeellaha Hoose and the number of individuals registered due to Conflict/Insecurity.

Correlation between the Number of Individuals from Hiiraan Displacements caused by flood and VHI data.

Correlation between the Number of Individuals from Sool Displacements caused by drought.

Being part of this AI challenge The most important is that you know that the final product will be used to save people’s lives, what can be more motivating than that?

By engaging in Omdena’s global community, I learned about satellite imagery and about enhancing datasets by creating fake images with GANS in a record time of two months.

A metaphor for aspiring ML engineers.

Learning that Apple trees produce some mixture of great fruit and wormy messes. Yet the apples in high-end grocery stores display 100% perfect fruit. Between orchard and grocery, someone spends significant time removing the bad apples or throwing a little wax on the salvageable ones. As an ML engineer, you’ll spend enormous amounts of your time tossing out bad examples and cleaning up the salvageable ones. Even a few “bad apples” can spoil a large data set.

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65 SYNAPSE

Prediction versus the original value

4TH QUARTER 2019

Building the neural network A neural network that predicts the weekly VHI of Somalia by using historical data as described above. You can find it here The model produces a validation loss of 0.030 and training loss of 0.005, Below is the prediction of the neural network using test data.

CAPE INVEST HIGHLIGHTS AI Expo Africa – Africa’s Largest B2B AI Trade Show, Cape Town, SA

4TH QUARTER 2019

After Having recently concluded its 2nd annual AI Expo Africa, Invest Cape Town caught up with the co-founders of Africa’s largest Artificial Intelligence b2b, supplier-focused trade event, to gain some insight into the African AI landscape, and the reasons behind choosing Cape Town as a venue for such an innovative tech community. The ground-breaking community event and its showcase Expo, Conference and AI Workshops are served by new media additions to the stable, AI TV and a community publication called Synapse – the first of its kind in Africa.

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Nick Bradshaw and Roy Bannister have a collective 40+ year track record of technology and journalistic reporting, publications, events and community building, and a passion to see AI used to benefit Africa socially and economically throug education, implementation across all business and government sectors, and investment into African AI initiatives. One of the key aims of the event is to demystify the hype around AI and 4IR, and showcase real-world applications available to business and government from African innovators, as well as global leaders in the AI space.

“We believe the tech media industry is changing. We are leveraging new formats and platforms to communicate the business opportunity in the African AI & Data Science landscape for entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders and corporates.

We make our content accessible across the whole of Africa by removing price and knowledge barriers to content, creating new event formats and sharing the fastest growing business opportunity across the continent with our community,” says Nick.

“Choosing Cape Town as a base to showcase the continent’s AI offerings, was a no-brainer” says Roy, “with a forward-looki g approach to new ideas, a can-do approach to all things, especially tech, and a willingness to invest in this sector, it’s no wonder that Cape Town has been named Africa’s leading digital city. AI Expo Africa and its goals fit perfectly with goals of he City of Cape Town to entrench the city as one of the leaders in this space globally.”

While AI Expo Africa is mainly business-focused and designed to bring users across all sectors like retail, banking, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, mining it also has a strong skills-development and capacity building element and offers A Skills workshops not only to c-suite business executives looking to understand AI at a practical level, but also offers free AI o students, young data scientists and engineers. These are all backed up by a world-class conference offering and expo spac showcasing start-ups, vendors and platform providers ranging from local tech companies, to continental innovators like Telkom and global leaders like SAP, Amazon, UIPath, Blue Prism and Hitachi to name a few.

Continued on page 76

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The Faculty of Computing and Informatics is one of six Faculties at the Namibia University of Science and Technology (NUST) with 1400 students. The University has approximately 12000 students spread across its city campus in Windhoek and 10 regional centres. The University houses a number of centres and units such as a Namibia Business Innovation Institute, the Namibian-German Centre for Logistics, the Materials Testing Institute, the Namibia Energy Institute and the Innovation Design Lab. Faculty of Computing and Informatics: Academic Programmes and Research 

We offer formal degrees and postgraduate certificates in specialised fields as well as certifications in Oracle, SAP and Cisco. Our future offerings include Health Informatics, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Data Science to complement our current degree offerings which are: Bachelor of Computer Science: Cyber Security/Software Development/Communication Networks/Systems Administration Bachelor of Informatics Postgraduate Certificate: Information Systems Audit Master of Informatics / Computer Science

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As a DAAD In-Region Centre for Masters in Computer Science and Informatics, full-time Master scholarships are offered to students from across Africa.

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Research niche areas are: Big Data, Indigenous Knowledge in the Digital World, Smart and Secure Environments and Digital Transformation divided into several research clusters such as: Indigenous Knowledge Management Systems Marginalised Community Development Smart Communication Systems

Digital Forensic and Information Security Dependable Advanced Network Systems E-Participation

Inclusive and Collaborative Local Tech Innovation Hub The Inclusive and Collaborative Local Tech Innovation Hub (https://ictechhub.com/) providing inclusive innovation services in Namibia and beyond. The Tech Innovation Hub works partners with among others private sector companies, government entities, NGOs, communities, investors, business mentors, and academics who collaborate with young innovators such as the San youth to create technology solutions through people-centric approaches.

Centre of Excellence in Information Technology (CEIT) The Centre of Excellence in Information Technology (CEIT) is a joint effort of the Namibian and the Indian Government via the Centre for the Development of Advanced Computing (CDAC) to enhance cooperation in education. The Centre’s core pillars are: Big Data, Cyber Security, Artificial Intelligence and Advanced Software Development. Currently sixmonth certificates are offered in Big Data Technologies, Advanced Web Technologies, and Ethical Hacking & Information Security. More offerings will follow soon. The Centre is equipped with state-of-the-art computing infrastructure with training labs, video conferencing facilities and a CDAC PARAM supercomputer with High Performance Computing (HPC) applications. This complements the existing two HPCs to enhance our Data Science capabilities.

Contact: Julia Semi, Faculty Officer, Tel:+264-61-2072923, Email: jsemi@nust.na www.nust.na or www.fci.nust.na

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CAIR Hosts AI Expert at UCT

4TH QUARTER 2019

The Centre for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR) hosted Prof. Adnan Darwiche at UCT, where he delivered a talk on Machine Learning.

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PROF. DARWICHE, who directs the Automated Reasoning Group is a AAAI and ACM Fellow.

He discussed the compilation of some common machine learning systems into symbolic and tractable representations that precisely capture their input-output behavior. This includes classifiers based on neural networks Bayesian networks and random forests. He also showed how compiled symbolic representations can be used to explain and verify system behavior, including bias, in addition

to quantifying system robustness. The Prof. also discussed a new class of tractable, machine learning models: Testing Arithmetic Circuits (TACs), which are as expressive as neural networks. The structure of TACs can be synthesized from domain knowledge and their parameters can be learned from labeled data using gradient descent. â&#x20AC;&#x153;However, one can reason about the behavior of TACs and provide some guarantees that are invariant to how TACs are trained from labeled data,â&#x20AC;? he says. ai

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Cape Invest highlights AI Expo Africa...

Continued from page 66

4TH QUARTER 2019

“We’ve been really amazed by the interest AI Expo Africa has garnered,” says Nick. “In 2019 we achieved significant growt of the community as a whole with 50+ sponsors and 375 companies represented as sponsors, delegates or speakers – all with an interest in AI/4IR. We achieved our goal of achieving a mix of global players down to the smallest/newest start-ups and businesses of every size in between. Overall, we achieved growth of over 30% in c-suite attendees, community and conference. Of significant interest this year, was not onl the support from Wesgro and the City of Cape Town, and a phenomenally successful bi-lateral trade delegation from France that resulted in an AI deal being signed, but a visit and speech

by Telecommunications Minister Stella Ndabeni-Abrahams, who pledged her support for next year’s event and the groundbreaking work our event and community are doing.”

Original article link https://www.investcapetown.com/capetown-ideally-suited-for-african-artificial-intelligence-showcas event/

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About Cape Invest The Invest Cape Town initiative was launched by the City of Cape Town to strengthen and promote our status as a highperformance, African business hub that supports big ideas and innovation. The City of Cape Town enables growth by linking businesses to new insights, opportunities and solutions. Invest Cape Town is a demonstration of the City’s commitment to creating a platform that contributes to the increased awareness, attractiveness and competitiveness of the city as a place to do business.

Our mission is to attract and retain foreign direct investment which is of strategic importance to the economic development of Cape Town. We work with international and local entrepreneurs, SMEs and multinationals that wish to set up a business in Cape Town. On the ground we collaborate with partners from business formations, investment promotion agencies and sector support entities, and all spheres of

government. The Invest Cape Town team offers a wide range o customized services, free of charge, for any business stage you are in. Explore our website to learn more about what we do.

Our services include, amongst others: Investment facilitation Information on sector-specific business opportunitie Expert knowledge, support and development opportunities to small and medium sized businesses Enterprise & Supplier Development (market access, matchmaking) Overcoming regulatory processes that create red tape (licenses, permit approvals) Navigating City Services landscape (connecting businesses with the right officia Business Operation & Expansion (running & growing a business) Facilitate incoming visits from international delegations Supports development processes for strategically important investments in the manufacturing and business services sectors Provide specialist facilitation services in the Atlantis Industrial Area, with a particular focus on implementation of the Atlantis GreenTech Special Economic Zone Manages the City’s investment incentives programme Linking investors to our sector specific industry partner Provincial and National Government department liaison Facilitating skills programmes in partnership with SME’s and large firms for in-demand occupations and growth sector About AI Expo Africa AI Expo Africa is the largest business focused Artificia Intelligence (AI) & Data Science B2B trade event and conference in Africa. Our 2020 conference and expo will run on 3rd-4th September 2020 and builds upon the phenomenal success of the 2018 / 2019 events that were held in Cape Town, that cemented it as the largest gathering of its kind, with over 1000+ registered decision makers, investors, buyers, suppliers, innovators, SMBs and global brands in the region focusing on real world AI and Data Science business applications. ai

South African Automated Support from Atura...

Continued from page 32 channel plumbing. The Azure bot framework offered us all o these pieces of infrastructure. These services were crucial for us, because we believe in engaging with the client in the channel of their choice and thus wanted to target as many different cha channels as possible,” explains Cartmel. Azure allows the user to control language flows while providing flexibility for testing d debugging. “Our developers enjoy the user interface; building and testing is easy inside Azure,” he explains.

People-centric technology innovates in Africa Atura can help businesses save money and, more

importantly, empower people to manage their finance more intelligently. “There’s this initiative to lend in Africa so that people can be entrepreneurs. There’s a bright side and a dark side to that. The bright side we all understand very well. But the dark side is that if you are not mindful about enabling the consumer to access the right information, they can get trapped in a debt cycle. And that can cripple their future. So just trying to facilitate that transparency, for us, is really the key. By having access to information, maybe users will be able to renegotiate a new payment plan or just better understand what they owe. That’s what keeps me moving forward with this project. And Microsoft supports us in this mission,” concludes Cartmel. ai

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