This challenge is part of Benin National AI Olympiad 2026 (Olympiades Nationales d’Intelligence Artificielle), the first step of the national programme to select and prepare young Beninese talents for the International AI Olympiad (IOAI) - 2026. The programme is piloted by the Ministère du Numérique et de la Digitalisation (MND), the Ministère de l’Enseignement Supérieur et de la Recherche Scientifique (MESRS), the Ministère des Enseignements Secondaire, Technique et de la Formation Professionnelle (MESTFF), and the and the Agence de Développement de Sèmè City (ADSC).

Governments map roads so services like healthcare and education can reach people. Some roads are built by governments, but others are made by people, for example near farms or mines. These new roads are not always recorded, so officials must check and map them.

The objective of this challenge is to identify whether an image contains a road segment or not. Dry river beds, railway tracks and power lines could look like roads. It is important to classify these as “not roads”.

This work helps governments find missing roads and improve their maps. Better road maps make it easier for people, services, and businesses to move and connect. For Benin, improving road mapping directly supports national digital infrastructure goals under the SNIAM 2023–2027 strategy.

The evaluation metric for this competition is Area Under the Curve (AUC).

For every row in the dataset, submission files should contain 2 columns: ID and Target.

Where 1 indicates that the image contains a road and 0 indicate that the image does not contain a road.

Your submission file should look like this (numbers to show format only):

Image_ID       Target   
ID_D9ONL553    0.13   
ID_263YTILY    0.87

The top participants will be selected to advance to Phase 2 of the National Preparation Programme. Selected finalists will gain access to an intensive training programme covering: algorithmics, applied mathematics, Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Computer Vision, NLP and robotics. The top participants will be selected to take part in a 3-month training programme, giving them access to the final phase of the National AI Olympiad.

There are 5000 Zindi points available. You can read more about Zindi points here.

• Languages and tools: You may only use open-source languages and tools in building models for this challenge.
• Who can compete: to Beninese students (collèges and lycées) under 20 years old on the first day of the international competition
• Submission limits: 15 submission per day, 200 submissions overall
• Team size: Individual participation only - no team submissions allowed
• Public-Private Split: Zindi maintains a public leaderboard and a private leaderboard for each challenge. The public leaderboard includes approximately 30% of the test dataset. The private leaderboard will be revealed at the close of the challenge. It contains the remaining 70% of the test set.
• Data Sharing: You are allowed to access, use and share challenge data for any commercial, non-commercial, research or education purposes, under a CC-BY SA 4.0 license.
• Code Review: Top 75 participants on the private leaderboard will receive an email requesting their code at the close of the challenge. You will have 24 hours to submit your code. You thereby agree to assign all worldwide rights of copyright in nad to such winning solution to Zindi. Failure to respond will result in disqualification.
• Code sharing: Multiple accounts, or sharing of code and information across accounts is not allowed and will lead to disqualification.

Datasets, packages and general principles

The solution must be publicly-available, open-source packages only.

You may use only the datasets provided for this challenge.

You may use pretrained models as long as they are openly available to everyone.

Automated machine learning tools such as automl are not permitted.

If the error metric requires probabilities to be submitted, do not set thresholds (or round your probabilities) to improve your place on the leaderboard. In order to ensure that the client receives the best solution we will need the raw probabilities. This will allow the clients to set thresholds to their own needs.

You must notify Zindi/ADSC immediately upon learning of any unauthorised transmission of or unauthorised access to the challenge data, and work with Zindi/ADSC to rectify any unauthorised transmission or access.

Your solution must not infringe the rights of any third party and you must be legally entitled to assign ownership of all rights of copyright in and the winning solution code to Zindi/ADSC.

Submissions and winning

Before the end of the challenge you need to choose 2 submissions to be judged on for the private leaderboard. If you do not make a selection your 2 best public leaderboard submissions will be used to score on the private leaderboard.

During the challenge, your best public score will be displayed regardless of the submissions you have selected. When the challenge closes your best private score out of the 2 selected submissions will be displayed.

Note that to count, your submission must first pass processing. If your submission fails during the processing step, it will not be counted and not receive a score; nor will it count against your daily submission limit. If you encounter problems with your submission file, your best course of action is to ask for advice on the challenge page.

If two solutions earn identical scores on the leaderboard, the tiebreaker will be the date and time in which the submission was made (the earlier solution will win).

There are no cash prizes for this challenge.

The reward for the top participants is selection into the 3-month National AI training programme, leading to the final phase of the Bénin National AI Olympiad.

You acknowledge and agree that Zindi may, without any obligation to do so, remove or disqualify an individual or account if Zindi believes that such individual or account is in violation of these rules. Entry into this challenge constitutes your acceptance of these official challenge rules.

Zindi is committed to providing solutions of value to our clients and partners. To this end, we reserve the right to disqualify your submission on the grounds of usability or value. This includes but is not limited to the use of data leaks or any other practices that we deem to compromise the inherent value of your solution.

Code Reproducibility

If your submitted code does not reproduce your score on the leaderboard, we reserve the right to adjust your rank to the score generated by the code you submitted.

If your code does not run you will be dropped from the top 75. Please make sure your code runs before submitting your solution.

Always set the seed. Rerunning your model should always place you at the same position on the leaderboard. When running your solution, if randomness shifts you down the leaderboard we reserve the right to adjust your rank to the closest score that your submission reproduces.

Custom packages in your submission notebook will not be accepted.

You may only use tools available to everyone i.e. no paid services or free trials that require a credit card.

Read this article on how to prepare your documentation and this article on how to ensure a successful code review.

Consequences of breaking any rules of the challenge or submission guidelines:

• First offence: No prizes for 6 months and 2000 points will be removed from your profile (probation period). If you are caught cheating, all individuals involved in cheating will be disqualified from the challenge(s) you were caught in and you will be disqualified from winning any challenges for the next six months and 2000 points will be removed from your profile. If you have less than 2000 points to your profile your points will be set to 0.
• Second offence: Banned from the platform. If you are caught for a second time your Zindi account will be disabled and you will be disqualified from winning any challenges or Zindi points using any other account.

Teams with individuals who are caught cheating will not be eligible to win prizes or points in the challenge in which the cheating occurred, regardless of the individuals' knowledge or participation in the offence.

Teams with individuals who have previously committed an offence will not be eligible for any prizes for any challenges during the 6-month probation period.

Monitoring of submissions

We will review the top 75 solutions of every challenge when the challenge ends.

We reserve the right to request code from any user at any time during the challenge. You will have 24 hours to submit your code following the rules for code review (see above).

Zindi reserves the right not to explain our reasons for requesting code. If you do not submit your code within 24 hours you will be disqualified from winning any challenges or Zindi points for the next six months.

If you fall under suspicion again and your code is requested and you fail to submit your code within 24 hours, your Zindi account will be disabled and you will be disqualified from winning any challenges or Zindi points with any other account.

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. Entry into this competition constitutes your acceptance of these official competition rules.

Zindi also reserves the right to disqualify you and/or your submissions from any competition if we believe that you violated the rules or violated the spirit of the competition or the platform in any other way. The disqualifications are irrespective of your position on the leaderboard and completely at the discretion of Zindi.

Please refer to the FAQs and Terms of Use for additional rules that may apply to this competition. We reserve the right to update these rules at any time.