We’ve partnered with Zindi to optimise public transport in Nairobi

We’re committed to finding smarter ways to move around our cities. Because of this, we launched Uber Movement, a website to help urban planners, city leaders, third-parties and the public better understand the transportation needs of their cities.

In order to continue to play a role in helping cities make data-driven transportation policy, planning and operational decisions, we’re proud to partner with Zindi, a data science competition platform for Africa. Zindi develops and hosts online machine learning challenges that source and promote the best data science solutions to Africa’s most pressing problems, such as congestion.

To promote the Uber Movement tool, we’ve sponsored Zindi’s inaugural data science competitios, which was officially launched at the AI Expo in Cape Town on 10 September 2018. Uber’s Senior Associate Public Policy for South Africa, Mosa Mkhize, represented us at the launch event, by participating in a session which focused on how traffic data can help us better understand people’s movement in and around Nairobi.

The competition which will run from 10 September to 13 January 2019, challenges data scientists to predict demand for public transportation routes by extracting and creating their own data sets using the Uber Movement tool, which was rolled out in Kenya earlier this year. In addition, a cash prize will be up for grabs for the contestant that makes the best use of the Movement data!

Technology is increasingly at the core of how people move around their cities and needs to be harnessed to create sustainable options to drive transportation systems around the world. As cities across Sub-Saharan Africa and the globe make the move towards enabling smart cities, technology will play a critical role in improving urban mobility!