Meet Iffanice!

Iffanice Houndayi is one of our two new machine learning interns from Carnegie Mellon University Africa, situated in Kigali, Rwanda. He is originally from Benin and moved to Rwanda last year to enrol in one of Africa’s most prestigious engineering programmes. With his practical and theoretical experience in applied machine learning, he has been contributing to our code base from day one.

What got you into machine learning?

I’d say it was my early interest in Python programming language and in adversarial games agents. Later, I became interested in artificial intelligence applications in real life for forecasting and computer vision.

How does our work resonate with your own experience growing up in Benin?

I was lucky enough to grow up in an area where access to electricity was not a problem. But in Benin as in many countries in Africa, there are still remote areas that unfortunately do not have access to energy. I like how VIDA uses earth observation and machine learning to make an impact and scale up energy access.

What is your favorite book?

At the moment, it is “The Alchemist” by Paulo Coelho. In my opinion it is the kind of book with a deep meaning that allows you to discover and to listen to yourself better, something that I consider very important for the evolution of oneself.

What is something about Africa you wish is more widely known around the world?

Despite all the negative prejudices surrounding Africa, which are mostly untrue, it is important to let the world know that Africa is full of very talented young people. Many of them are fighting and working for sustainable development. And that is regardless of the fact that they may be disadvantaged or simply not have the right opportunities. It’s also a great place to live and invest!

… and you are the best example for this talent and potential. Thank you for this talk and your great work!