A Workforce of 85,000 International Data Scientists !

Zindi has proved to be a runaway success in solving the talent problem for AI in Africa, says a fellow AI company founder.
Photo illustration by Jacob Wackerhausen: Getty Images


An African startup shakes up the competition in the data science industry.

By Kelly Barraza

Founded in 2018 in South Africa by CEO Celina Lee, CTO Megan Yates and Ekow Duker, Zindi is a completely online data science platform and networking community that supports AI and data-driven competitions for over 85,000 student and professional data scientists.

Officially headquartered in the U.S., the Zindi staff is distributed around the world, building its global presence outside of its homebase of Africa, particularly in Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. Through its Ambassador Network, which comprises 230 Zindi Ambassadors across 32 countries in Africa, various in-person and virtual events throughout the year are held in their respective cities and countries, including workshops, tutorials, hackathons and career and networking events.

Celina Lee’s thought leadership in the intersection between data and development has played central roles in the launches of global platforms, including the Alliance for Financial Inclusion (www.afi-global.org), insight2impact (www.i2ifacility.org) and now Zindi (www.zindi.africa). In a follow-up to a recent report for Site Selection called “Will Africa Be the Unlikely Winner in the International AI Race?” I spoke with Celina Lee about the company’s evolution and impact on workforce development in the emerging, ever-shifting AI and data science market.

How did Zindi start and what were the motivating factors?

Celina Lee: It’s been a journey. I was living in South Africa for a different job — to build a data platform. I have a background in applied math and computer science. But I was working in international development, so World Bank and UN type of projects as well as local NGO projects.

I ended up meeting my co-founders Megan Yates and Ekow Duker through that job because we hired them. They were running a data science consulting company. So, we came together and had this concept — this passion about data science in Africa and data platforms and making data more accessible. And from their perspective, they had been working with some of the largest banks and telecommunication companies and retailers in Africa.

There’s this narrative where companies [were] saying, “Well, we want to do data science, we want to do AI, but we’re going to hire a big consulting firm from New York or from Europe to solve all our problems.” There was this misconception that there just [weren’t] the people that they needed — and they are actually right there in their own backyards.

“How do we create a space where companies can find these incredible people in their countries? And then also how can young people in Africa build up their skills, showcase themselves, build their professional profiles and connect with the opportunities that they deserve?”

– Celina Lee, CEO and co-founder of Zindi

Through the project that I was running, I was meeting a lot of young people across Africa who were super smart, super ambitious — trying to pursue their careers in data science and AI but just didn’t have access to those opportunities. So that was the impetus for Zindi in a way.

How do we create a space where companies can find these incredible people in their countries? And then also how can young people in Africa build up their skills, showcase themselves, build their professional profiles and connect with the opportunities that they deserve?

Zindi really encourages people to find solutions to real-world problems. Can you provide an example or two of a solution that a Zindi team found?

Celina Lee: To give you a couple of examples, right now we have a challenge that’s on using large language models or developing a specific language model that can provide antenatal care to new mothers in Kenya. We’re doing another one where we’re using satellite data to identify what types of crops are being grown.

We’ve run over 400 of these challenges. Every month, we’re launching new ones. My main job is feeding that pipeline of problems and datasets that come onto the platform. It’s also our business model — we charge the organizations for putting their datasets and problems on the platform. Companies own the top three solutions from the challenges. Basically, they’ll have hundreds of people that are proving that they can solve the types of problems that matter to them. So now they can hire top talent. They can build their brand and their presence in the market. That’s what we’re constantly doing, and that feeds the community. Every month we’re onboarding close to 2,000 new users onto the platform.


With over 200 ambassadors in 32 countries, Zindi is able to host multiple in-person and virtual events focused on learning, creating data-driven solutions and professional networking.

Images courtesy of Zindi


It’s a win-win. We’ve tackled everything from climate change to fine-tuning large language models to more standard business problems like predicting customer returns and fraud detection. There are so many different use cases.

What kind of purpose does your work serve for communities in South Africa?

Celina Lee: Zindi is about building the talent pipeline. We could have 100 to 1,000 people that work on a single problem on the platform and compete to build the best solutions. Only the top three win cash prizes.

But aside from that, even if they aren’t in the top three, people are leaving with new skills. Everything that they do on the platform gets rolled into their profile. And an independent survey of our users found that 20% reported getting jobs as data scientists because of their profile.

I’ve even heard of users in Kenya printing out their Zindi profile for job interviews. So, how do we serve the community in Africa? There are solutions. But aside from that, there’s also this incredible talent pipeline that is being built as well. It’s a project portfolio, essentially.

What is Zindi’s reach outside of South Africa and the continent?

Celina Lee: Even though we started in South Africa, it is not even our largest country. Nigeria is. We have 85,000 people across 185 countries in the world.

About 65% to 70% of our users are on the continent in Africa. Within Africa, we have people in 52 of 54 African countries. It’s very much a Pan African footprint — a Pan African play. And then over the years, we’ve expanded all over the world.

We’ve run a number of challenges for organizations in India. We also right now have a significant contract with the government of Barbados where we’re running challenges for the government and onboarding young people onto the platform. We ran our first hackathon [in Barbados], which was an in-person hackathon with our ambassador there a couple weeks ago.

Is there any specific trend in the past year that you’ve noticed within AI or data science that has informed your operations for the company?

Celina Lee: The biggest thing is when ChatGPT came out a couple of years ago. It kind of disrupted everything in a good way for us. For businesses, it’s put AI in a totally different light. All sectors and all businesses are immediately trying to figure out how they can harness the power of AI.

For Zindi that’s opened up a whole new world of possibilities when it comes to the AI solutions that we’re building and the challenges that we can run on the platform. The demand for AI talent has also skyrocketed. It’s been an interesting and exciting development for us.

Does the location where your company is headquartered have advantages for local workers, users or business partners?

Celina Lee: Running an African company from the US has been great, for all the reasons mentioned above. We have global ambitions for Zindi. We want Zindi to be the platform serving AI talent from around the world, to the world! We are creating pathways and opportunities for people to build their skills and careers in AI, especially those who would not normally have such access. The world is in need of AI innovations that solve their problems, more urgently than ever. We cannot rely on only certain small corners of the world to provide the right AI solutions that the world needs. Ultimately the talent has to come from the very markets that need AI — from Africa to Asia, the Caribbean to the Pacific. We are on a mission to make AI work for everyone.

Your company predates COVID. Did the pandemic affect your challenges?

Celina Lee: About half of our 85,000 users are university students. Within Africa, there were really strict lockdowns — way more than the U.S. Most of the universities completely closed down. So that means that half of our user base was sent home and were unemployed and unoccupied for quite a long time.

That was also an opportunity and a scary time, right? Everyone was a bit scared, and there was so much uncertainty. It set back a lot of people in their own career and university trajectories. But on the other hand, there was a gap that we stepped into during that time. One user said it saved his life because he went home, and there was nothing to do. Everything stopped in one moment, and so he just got busy on Zindi.

We accelerated the number of competitions we were running. We started running about one competition every single week during COVID. We burnt ourselves out. But we accelerated everything we were doing because it was feeding the community. The community was so eager to continue their learning journey, and Zindi provided a place for that.

A lot of African governments have been really pushing toward getting policy and ethical guidelines around AI and machine learning. Does that affect your business model at all? Are you thinking about that?

Celina Lee: We have had partnerships with a couple of governments. We had one with the government of Togo. It’s actually opening up a lot of opportunities with those dialogues about, let’s say, data privacy, AI, governance, all of those things. Countries are also realizing how important it is to build up their own data capacity, their own AI talent in their markets and develop solutions that actually serve their own markets. Without naming any names because nothing is formal yet, we’re having a few really interesting conversations with countries in Africa that are ready to invest and take their countries forward in this AI landscape.

What are some plans for Zindi you have in the pipeline?

Celina Lee: We’re in the process of fundraising right now because we have this project in Barbados. What’s exciting to me is that we’re an African start-up. We have African roots.We’ve captured the world’s attention in many ways. I mean, it was the Ministry of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology in Barbados who approached us because they heard of what we were doing in Africa. It’s making the world more interconnected. Especially south-to-south as in Barbados. When we talk to the minister, he fully understands the relationship and opportunities to make that connection between the Caribbean as an African diaspora population and Africa. It’s opening up all kinds of new connections and doors between the regions.

We also did a project with the government of Saudi Arabia last year and so from the Middle East to North Africa, we have a lot of people in North Africa on the platform. We also did a project with the government of Singapore a couple years ago.

What’s exciting is that the so-called “Global South” is taking notice and realizing the strength in interconnectedness, learning and cross-pollination. Especially with what’s happening with ChatGPT or OpenAI. The large language models know American English very well. There’s the Chinese company DeepSeek. There are these epicenters where AI is being developed.

I think part of the reason why there’s this interest in interconnectedness is because there’s 6,000 languages in this world. There are people who speak languages that are maybe not even written. Everyone is trying to figure out how we leverage the power of AI for our own purpose. And the use cases are as basic as health care. How do I get health care? How do I use AI to extend health care to more people? For example, like extending care to more new moms in a place like Kenya.

I’m really excited for Zindi to be the pipeline and the platform for the emerging and developing market. And a platform for developers that are looking to build their careers in this space and as a source and a factory of very unique, high-value AI solutions that can only be built by people like this.

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