Catalyze Session with AI Centre of Excellence Generates Ideas For Organization Creating Job Opportunities for African Youth in AI

March 3rd, 2022

Founded in 2020, AI Centre of Excellence (AiCE), a project of Adanian Labs, is a research hub, accelerator, and trainer, creating skilled and employable AI and ML engineers through partners like Nvidia. 

Passionate about maximizing the growth of Artificial Intelligence in Africa and creating sustainable job opportunities through training and educating youth in AI and data science, AiCE took part in a Knowledge Pledge Catalyze Session in early February where it asked volunteer leaders – Signatories of The Knowledge Pledge – for advice in fortifying its training program. 

The Signatories advised the AiCE team on a variety of strategic areas, including how to clarify and differentiate themselves and how to ready its proposition for scaling and sustainability. They  also pledged to connect AiCE to a broad range of organizations after the session.

The Signatories participating included Sarah McCue, CEO, Axion Education; Mark Minevich, Global Social Innovation Technology & Growth Executive; Mehdi Mirakhorli, Associate Professor & Kodak Endowed Scholar, Rochester Institute of Technology; Tan Moorthy, Executive Vice President, Head - US Delivery Operations and Global Head Education, Training and Assessments, InfoSys; and George Mulamula, Founder and CEO, Technovate Advisory Services. The session was facilitated by Juan Carlos Velten, Co-Founder at Swim, Partner at InnovationLab.

Social venture team members included John Kamara, Founder, AI Centre of Excellence; Irene Kiwia, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer, Adanian Labs; Bendon Murgor, Founder & CIO of Paylend Africa, Co-founder & CTO of AdaLab; Natasha Ochiel, Co-Founder & Head of Business, AICE.

“It was a great session that allowed for us to validate our current progress, open up new avenues of achieving our goals, brainstorm on new ideas, and enlarge our network towards achieving those goals,” shared Natasha Ochiel.

"Our Catalyze Sessions reinforce our fundamental belief that connecting the right experts to the right causes can lead to great outcomes,” Knowledge Pledge CEO Elaine MacDonald said. “Though the Catalyze Sessions themselves are just 90 minutes, they are just the beginning of an ongoing knowledge exchange that leads to deeper impact.”