The World Health Organization estimates that 35% of women have experienced physical and/or sexual violence at some point in their lives.

As a result of the global pandemic and resulting lock-down measures, gender inequality has increased around the world. This includes concerning rises in cases of violence, sexual assault, and femicide in the past months across Africa and the globe. The United Nations has called this the "shadow pandemic".

Liberia, for example, recorded a 50% increase in gender-based violence (GBV) in the first half of this year. UN's MINUSCA mission in the Central African Republic reported a 27% increase in instances of rape, and a 69% increase in cases where women and children were hurt.

This “shadow pandemic” and GBV in general is often veiled by a culture of silence and a lack of information and data about the problem itself.

This challenge calls on the Zindi community to help create, curate and collate quality datasets on GBV. The objective of this challenge is to help shed light on this topic, to lay the groundwork for informed actions and to support data-driven solutions to contribute to the battle to end GBV.

About Agence Française de Développement (afd.fr/en)

The Agence Française de Développement (AFD) Group funds, supports and accelerates the transition to a fairer and more sustainable world. Focusing on climate, biodiversity, peace, education, urban development, health and governance, our teams carry out more than 4,000 projects in France’s overseas departments and territories and another 115 countries. In this way, we contribute to the commitment of France and French people to support the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

To be eligible for this competition you must register for this competition on Zindi. You must upload your submission to the competition leaderboard. Note that there will be no scores on this leaderboard. This challenge is open to everyone.

At the end of the competition, the judging panel will score all submissions according to the evaluation criteria. The panel’s determination is final.

Our intention is that the datasets are kept free and open for public use under a Creative Commons license 4.0 or similar. Data already licensed under more restrictive terms will not be eligible.

If your dataset wins, by accepting the prize, you thereby agree to making the dataset publicly available under a Creative Commons license 4.0 or similar and allow Zindi to use the dataset for a future challenge. All other datasets that did not win will similarly be encouraged to share their datasets as a public good. Winners will be paid in USD or the currency of the competition. If your account cannot receive US Dollars or the currency of the competition then your bank will need to provide proof of this and Zindi will try to accommodate this.

If two data sets are identical, the tie breaker will be the date and time in which the submission was made (the earlier solution will win).

Maximum number of submissions per day is 4.

Teams and collaboration

You may participate in competitions as an individual or in a team of up to four people. When creating a team, the team must have a total submission count less than or equal to the maximum allowable submissions as of the formation date. A team will be allowed the maximum number of submissions for the competition, minus the total number of submissions among team members at team formation. Prizes are transferred only to the individual players or to the team leader.

Multiple accounts per user are not permitted, and neither is collaboration or membership across multiple teams. Individuals and their submissions originating from multiple accounts will be immediately disqualified from the platform.

Code and datasets must not be shared privately outside of a team. Any code or datasets that are shared, must be made available to all competition participants through the platform. (i.e. on the discussion boards).

The Zindi user who sets up a team is the default Team Leader. The Team Leader can invite other data scientists to their team. Invited data scientists can accept or reject invitations. Until a second data scientist accepts an invitation to join a team, the data scientist who initiated a team remains an individual on the leaderboard. No additional members may be added to teams within the final 5 days of the competition or the last hour of a hackathon, unless otherwise stated in the competition rules

A team can be disbanded if it has not yet made a submission. Once a submission is made individual members cannot leave the team.

All members in the team receive points associated with their ranking in the competition and there is no split or division of the points between team members.

You acknowledge and agree that Zindi may, without any obligation to do so, remove or disqualify an individual, team, or account if Zindi believes that such individual, team, or account is in violation of Zindi’s Rules.

We reserve the right to modify these rules at any time as necessary.

Basic requirements: the dataset must be relevant to GBV and to Africa in some way.

Our intention is that the datasets are kept free and open for public use under a Creative Commons license 4.0 or similar. Data already licensed under more restrictive terms will not be eligible.

The datasets will be evaluated by an expert committee and will take into consideration the following criteria:

• The potential impact of the insights (40%): Does the dataset lend itself to meaningful applications (including machine learning applications) or analysis that would likely change thinking or even drive actions that could mitigate the risk and impact of GBV in Africa?
• Filling a gap (30%): Does the dataset cover a topic, a population, or other aspect of GBV in Africa for which little data exists. Does the data create potential for new insights that currently don’t exist or are currently under-represented and researched.
• Quality of the dataset (20%): Size of the dataset. Is the dataset robust, clean, complete, consistent, and usable?
• Documentation and presentation of the dataset (10%): Is the dataset formatted in a logical and usable way? Are variables well-defined and assumptions and sources well-documented?

For guidance on creating a usable dataset, please see this article: https://www.thinkingondata.com/minimum-requirements-for-a-dataset/

$500 USD will be awarded to the top 2 individuals or teams.

This challenge will close on 28 February 2021.

Final submissions must be received by 11:59 PM GMT.

We reserve the right to update the contest timeline if necessary.