Tutorial: Womxn in Big Data South Africa: Female-Headed Households in South Africa Challenge

Meet the winners of the Womxn in Big Data South Africa: Female-Headed Households in South Africa Challenge

Female household headship has been on the rise in South Africa in recent years. Compared to male-headed households, female-headed households tend to face greater social and economic challenges. Female-headed households, in general, are more vulnerable to lower household incomes and higher rates of poverty.

The South African census collects data on female headship and income levels of every household across the country every 10 years. However, it is important for policymakers and other actors to have accurate estimates of these statistics even in between census years. This challenge explores how machine learning can help improve monitoring key indicators at a ward level in between census years.

The objective of this challenge is to build a predictive model that accurately estimates the % of households per ward that are female-headed and living below a particular income threshold by using data points that can be collected through other means without an intensive household survey like the census.

This solution can potentially reduce the cost and improve the accuracy of monitoring key population indicators such as female household headship and income level in between census years. The winning solutions will be made publicly available at the end of the competition.

This competition is sponsored by Women in Big Data South Africa and Microsoft, in collaboration with HERE Technologies.

About Women in Big Data (womeninbigdata.org)

Women in Big Data is an industry initiative with the mission to inspire, connect, grow, and champion the success of women in this field. It was founded in 2015 by the women at Intel Silicon Valley; currently has a strong 14000 membership worldwide. The South African chapter is the first African chapter of its kind.

This forum is sponsored by several leading technology companies, including Intel, Cloudera, SAP.

Target members: Professional, experienced women at all levels of the organisation that are interested in repositioning their skills and pivot into data related career fields.

Activities: MeetUps -with internal women communities within partner organisations, Events that strive to capacity build (technical and soft skills) for professional development.

About HERE Technologies (here.com)

Where rich location data, intelligent products and powerful tools come together to drive your business forward.

As a company of over 8000 employees all focused on the concept of location and the potential it has to radically improve the way we do business, the way we get around and the way we live, we are shaping the future by redefining what was formerly known as a map. In 1985, we began with the simple goal to digitize mapping and pioneer in-car navigation systems. Over the next three decades, as NAVTEQ and NOKIA, we’ve built a legacy in mapping technology.

Today, we’re creating living three-dimensional maps that grow upwards, breathing with layers of information and insights. And we’re looking beyond. From autonomous driving, to the Internet of Things, we are building the future of location technology through strategic partnerships. Together we’re building open solutions for the future.

Community Digital Mapping Program

The HERE Technologies Digital Mapping Program aims to empower students, youth and women by equipping them with practical GIS mapping skills that will provide them with real-world experience and increase their competitive edge in the ever-changing real world. The program seeks to partner with educational institutions, NGOs, women in tech and organisations that are keen to make a positive impact of the transformation of GIS as well as invest their efforts to promote technology in education. Through the development of expert mapping communities, we ensure that we have a fresh and up to date map, but more importantly the program seeks to close the gap in skills development in Africa. Through the provision of participation certificates, recommendation letters and the ultimate goal of joining the Community Ambassador Program, the youth are exposed to a program that speaks to their needs and contributes to their overall growth and development. As a result of being leaders in location technology, HERE also provides free location APIs, under the Freemium Plan, that provides developers with access to over 20 APIs including Maps, Geocoding, Routing and Places with no credit card needed.

About Microsoft (microsoft.com)

Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT” @microsoft) enables digital transformation for the era of an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge. Microsoft has operated in Africa for more than 25 years. In that time they have built strong partnerships across the continent, helped bridge gaps in infrastructure, connectivity and capability, and are working to empower countries in Africa to digitally transform while creating sustained societal impact. Earlier this year, Microsoft opened Africa’s first hyper-scale data centers in Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa. Most recently, the company also announced the opening of two Africa Development Centers in Nairobi and Lagos, where world class African talent can create innovative solutions for local and global impact.

Teams and collaboration

You may participate in this competition 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 highest 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 disqualified.

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

Datasets and packages

The solution must use publicly-available, open-source packages only. Your models should not use any of the metadata provided.

You may use only the datasets provided for this competition.

The data used in this competition is the sole property of Zindi and the competition host. You may not transmit, duplicate, publish, redistribute or otherwise provide or make available any competition data to any party not participating in the Competition (this includes uploading the data to any public site such as Kaggle or GitHub). You may upload, store and work with the data on any cloud platform such as Google Colab, AWS or similar, as long as 1) the data remains private and 2) doing so does not contravene Zindi’s rules of use.

You must notify Zindi immediately upon learning of any unauthorised transmission of or unauthorised access to the competition data, and work with Zindi 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 to the winning solution code to Zindi.

Submissions and winning

You may make a maximum of 10 submissions per day. Your highest-scoring solution on the private leaderboard at the end of the competition will be the one by which you are judged.

As the challenge has now closed, the maximum number of submissions per day is 30.

Zindi maintains a public leaderboard and a private leaderboard for each competition. The Public Leaderboard includes approximately 20% 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 you are in the top 20 at the time the leaderboard closes, we will email you to request your code. On receipt of email, you will have 48 hours to respond and submit your code following the submission guidelines detailed below. Failure to respond will result in disqualification.

If your solution places 1st, 2nd, or 3rd on the final leaderboard, you will be required to submit your winning solution code to us for verification, and you thereby agree to assign all worldwide rights of copyright in and to such winning solution to Zindi.

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).

The winners will be paid via bank transfer, PayPal, or other international money transfer platform. International transfer fees will be deducted from the total prize amount, unless the prize money is under $500, in which case the international transfer fees will be covered by Zindi. In all cases, the winners are responsible for any other fees applied by their own bank or other institution for receiving the prize money. All taxes imposed on prizes are the sole responsibility of the winners.

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.

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.

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 10. 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.
• We expect full documentation. This includes:

- All data used

- Output data and where they are stored

- Explanation of features used

- Your solution must include the original data provided by Zindi and validated external data (no processed data)

- All editing of data must be done in a notebook (i.e. not manually in Excel)

Data standards:

• Your submitted code must run on the original train, test, and other datasets provided.
• If external data is allowed it must not exceed 1 GB. External data must be freely and publicly available, including pre-trained models with standard libraries. If external data is allowed, any data used should be shared on the discussion forum.
• Packages:

- You must use the most recent versions of packages. 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.

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

• First offence: No prizes or points for 6 months. 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 competitions or Zindi points for the next six months.
• 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 competitions or Zindi points using any other account.

Monitoring of submissions

• We will review the top 20 solutions of every competition when the competition ends.
• We reserve the right to request code from any user at any time during a challenge. You will have 24 hours to submit your code following the rules for code review (see above).
• If you do not submit your code within 24 hours you will be disqualified from winning any competitions 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 competitions or Zindi points.

Further updates and rulings of note:

• Multiple accounts per user, collaboration or membership across multiple teams are not allowed.
• Code may not be shared privately. Any code that is shared, must be made available to all competition participants through the platform.
• Solutions must use publicly-available, open-source packages only, and all packages must be the most updated versions.
• Solutions 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 to the winning solution code to Zindi.
• You will be disqualified if you do not respond within the timeframe given in the request for code.

We reserve the right to update these rules at any time.

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

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

Your submission file should look like this:

ward                target
21001001: Ward 1    67.895
21001001: Ward 2    34.087
21001001: Ward 3    55.987

This competition is open to anyone based anywhere of any gender, however, cash prizes will be awarded only to participants that are based in Africa (with a verified mailing address in Africa) and who are female (with an identification document that specifies gender). If one of the top winners does not meet these criteria, the leaderboard will remain the same, but the prize will go to the next winner on the leaderboard that qualifies for the cash prizes.

1st Place: $2 500 USD

2nd Place: $1 500 USD

3rd Place: $1 000 USD

Competition closes on 23 February 2020.

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

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

Looking to form a team? Or just looking for other data-oriented women in your area?

Check out these amazing communities near you:

South Africa

• Women in Big Data South Africa: @DataWomenSA
• R Ladies Cape Town: https://www.meetup.com/rladies-cape-town/ || @RLadiesCapeTown
• Women in Computational Science Research (WiCSR): @wicsr

Kenya

• Women in GIS Kenya: wigiske@gmail.com || @WiGISKe

Botswana

• Women in Machine Learning & Data Science (WiMLDS): gaborone@wimlds.org || https://www.meetup.com/Gaborone-Women-in-Machine-Learning-and-Data-Science/

Global

• Women in Machine Learning & Data Science (WiMLDS)
• Women in AI: https://www.womeninai.co/
• R Ladies: https://rladies.org/ or find your closest meetup on meetup.com

If you want to add your community to this list, please email us at zindi@zindi.africa.