This is a private hackathon whose primary purpose is for the members of the alliance4ai chapter to apply what they have learnt. If you are part of the alliance4ai chapter contact ai_csrw@alueducation.com for the secret code.

Logistics in Sub-Saharan Africa increases the cost of manufactured goods by up to 320%; while in Europe, it only accounts for up to 90% of the manufacturing cost.

Economies are better when logistics is efficient and affordable.

Sendy, in partnership with insight2impact facility, is hosting a Zindi challenge to predict the estimated time of delivery of orders, from the point of driver pickup to the point of arrival at final destination.

The solution will help Sendy enhance customer communication and improve the reliability of its service; which will ultimately improve customer experience. In addition, the solution will enable Sendy to realise cost savings, and ultimately reduce the cost of doing business, through improved resource management and planning for order scheduling.

Sendy helps men and women behind every type of business to trade easily, deliver more competitively, and build extraordinary businesses.

“We believe in them; we believe that logistics should be an enabler for them to achieve their goals, rather than a hindrance. We believe that everyone should be able to participate and thrive in the economy and that no small business should be left out because the cost of logistics is either too high or inaccessible.”

Data is a critical component in helping Sendy to build more efficient, affordable and accessible solutions. Given the details of a Sendy order, can we use historic data to predict an accurate time for the arrival of the rider at the destination of a package? In this competition, we’re challenging you to build a model that predicts an accurate delivery time, from picking up a package to arriving at the final destination. An accurate arrival time prediction will help all businesses to improve their logistics and communicate an accurate time to their customers.

This competition is being hosted by Sendy and insight2impact.

About ALU Rwanda (alueducation.com):

African Leadership University is pioneering a fresh approach to higher education in the 21st century; offering accredited undergraduate, postgraduate and executive education programmes in a unique and imaginative way. By integrating students’ learning with the real world, empowering students to take ownership of their own learning, equipping each student to think entrepreneurially, and employing the most engaging and inspiring teaching methods, ALU is pioneering a new take on higher education and leadership development. ALU has two campuses, Mauritius and Rwanda.

ALU Rwanda is accredited by the Higher Education Council of Rwanda and is located in the heart of the capital city in Kigali Heights. The campus opened its doors to its first class of students in September 2017 and currently has about 800 students. ALU Rwanda will expand to Kigali’s new Innovation City, where a permanent campus will be housed.

ABOUT ALLIANCE4AI ALU CHAPTER (alliance4ai.org):

Alliance4AI ALU chapter is part of the ALLIANCE4AI movement. This is a student-run club whose mission is to empower students to master artificial intelligence and its related technologies through tutorials, workshops, real-world projects and exposing members to the advancement and impact of AI in Africa.

About Sendy(sendyit.com):

Sendy is a business-to-business platform established in 2014, to enable businesses of all types and sizes to transport goods more efficiently across East Africa.

The company is headquartered in Kenya with a team of more than 100 staff, focused on building practical solutions for Africa’s dynamic transportation needs, from developing apps and web solutions, to providing dedicated support for goods on the move.

Currently operating in Kenya and Uganda, Sendy is expanding to Nigeria and Tanzania, to enable thousands more businesses to move volumes of goods easily, anywhere, at any time. Sendy aggregates a pool of delivery options from 28 ton, 14 ton, 5 ton trucks to pick up trucks, vans and motorcycles.

“At Sendy, we’re on a mission to change the lives of everyone we touch; from patients who rely on regular medicine at the local pharmacy to farmers who urgently need to move their produce to silos, we are offering a service that African companies can depend on. We are building a platform to tackle logistic challenges that business across Africa face on a day to day basis.”

About insight2impact(i2ifacility.org):

insight2impact (i2i) is a resource centre supporting the use of data for decision-making, with a focus on financial and economic inclusion. i2i is hosted by FinMark Trust and Cenfri and funded by the Gates Foundation in partnership with The Mastercard Foundation.

This is a private hackathon whose primary purpose is for the members of the alliance4ai chapter to apply what they have learnt. If you are part of the alliance4ai chapter contact ai_csrw@alueducation.com for the secret code.

You may use only the datasets provided for this competition. Your solution must use machine learning.

If your solution places 1st, 2nd, or 3rd in the final ranking, you will be required to submit your winning solution code to ALU Rwanda for verification and you thereby agree to share your code on GitHub as a public good to the sector.

Individual competitors are able to form teams of up to four people in this competition. You must adhere to the rules associated with teaming up.

Multiple accounts per user are not allowed. Collaboration across individuals not in the same team is not allowed, and collaboration between different teams is not allowed.

Code must not be shared privately. Any code that is shared, must be made available to all competition participants through the platform.

The solution must use publicly-available, open-source packages only, and may only make use of the data provided on the competition page.

Maximum 50 solutions submitted per day. Your highest-scoring solution will be the one by which you are judged.

Note that there are Public and Private Leaderboards. The Public Leaderboard excludes approximately 50% of the test dataset. While the competition is open, the Public Leaderboard will rank the submitted solutions by the accuracy score they achieve. Upon close of the competition, the Private Leaderboard, which covers 100% of the test dataset, will be made public and will constitute the final ranking for the competition.

If two solutions achieve identical scores on the leaderboard, the submission that was made earlier will win.

Please refer to the FAQs and Terms of Use for additional rules that may apply to this competition.

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 these rules or has otherwise brought the Zindi platform into disrepute.

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

The error metric for this competition is the Root Mean Squared Error

For every row in the dataset, submission files should contain 2 columns: order_id and Time from Pickup to Arrival (Predicted time in seconds between arrival and Pickup).

Your submission file should look like this:

Order_No                Time from Pickup to Arrival
Order_No_19248          197
Order_No_12736          7533
Order_No_768            768

Competition starts on 1st May and closes on 4th May 2020.

Final submissions must be received by 3:59 PM GMT.

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