Since we founded Zindi some 18 months ago, it’s been a rare privilege working with you. You’ve put forward your collective skills in data science to address challenges that affect us all.

We understand that trust is the most important quality of a digital platform like Zindi. But unfortunately there’ve been incidents of cheating on our competitions that undermine this trust.

Cheating doesn’t only rob the vast majority of Zindians who spend days in honest toil, working to improve their solutions. It also hurts the most vulnerable in our societies of an opportunity to improve their lives for the better. We take that extremely seriously.

At Zindi, we scrutinise leader boards carefully and are always on the look-out for suspicious entries. We’re also aware of the ways in which submissions can in some instances, be “gamed” to push an individual towards the top of the leaderboard. We’ve always taken swift action whenever we’ve objectively identified incidents of cheating. Since September 2019, we’ve disqualified 36 individuals from competitions and have banned 4 others from the platform all together.

Unfortunately, keeping ahead of the bad guys is a never-ending activity and we’re painfully aware that we can always do more. We’ll be strengthening our technology controls in the coming months and will also bolster human oversight of competition submissions. We’ll also be more transparent with you about our efforts to combat cheating.

But Zindi is above all a community. We’ve got exciting initiatives in the pipeline and we really want to build out the platform and  opportunities with you. Therefore we urge you to let us know whenever, and wherever, you suspect cheating. We commit to investigate these vigorously and will be unrelenting in preserving the integrity of your platform.

We started Zindi to give a voice to the amazing data science and machine learning talent that abounds in Africa. We also did it because we believe deeply in the potential for machine learning to solve problems and improve lives. These two principles continue to guide and inspire us every day. Let’s work together to make Zindi a phenomenal place for everybody.

Sincerely,

Celina Lee, Zindi CEO