Theme: Engaging Citizen Science and AI for Biodiversity Preservation and Restoration
Dates: 2-3 Oct 2025 (to be confirmed)
Main Venue: ODeL Malawi University of Business and Applied Sciences, Blantyre, Malawi
This year’s event aims to bring together insights and data from scientific communities, policy and decision making bodies and especially from citizens to help us better understand issues of environmental preservation and restoration in Malawi.
Go to the Chichewa page here.
We all are deeply connected to biodiversity, no matter where we live. Whether in a rural village or an urban environment, changes in biodiversity directly and indirectly impact our health, livelihoods, and well-being.
When biodiversity thrives:
- Clean air and water, pollination of crops, climate regulation, and disease control are more secure.
- In villages, biodiversity supports agriculture, medicinal plants, fishing, and forest resources.
- In cities, urban biodiversity helps cool the environment, reduce flood risk, improve wellbeing, and provide healthy spaces.
But when biodiversity is lost—due to deforestation, pollution, human damage or overuse—ecosystem services decline, food becomes less secure, and vulnerability to disasters and disease increases. Urban dwellers also feel the effects through lower quality food, rising temperatures, more floods, fewer green spaces, and lower air quality. Read this report with biodiversity facts from Malawi, and about the national biodiversity plan and appreciate the wonderful creation we live in.
We need your engagement whether you are a student or a working professional or a researcher or a policy maker! Enrol your idea or group of people with an idea and plan of action!
We seek the following types of contributions. These are not exhaustive and we welcome contributions that align to the overall direction expressed in the call below.
There will be prizes for each categories – to be announced soon. Contact us for questions.
- Perspectives on Human, Water and Environmental Stewardship: Exploring knowledge, beliefs, behaviours, and innovations in environmental conservation. Contributions may include essays, reflections, literature reviews, surveys, school-based projects, educational initiatives, research projects.
- Datasets: numerical, imagery, landscape, weather, vegetation, animal life, language, sound, maps and others. The datasets can be small or large, but it needs to be well organised. Datasets must be Malawi centred.
- Algorithms and Demonstrations: These can be for example Machine Learning algorithms or demonstrations using satellite images or other remote sensing technology. Our recommendation is to use Malawi data, but these could use other datasets as long as the techniques shown are applicable and suitable to Malawi scenarios/ problems.
- Impactful communication: Media – radio / written / share perspectives / Visualisations / Artists / Animations / Song / map / sound.
HOW TO CONTRIBUTE
Intention to contribute: by 10 June 2025
Final Submission: by 10 July 2025
Submit your interest by email to indabax@mubas.ac.mw. Having your contact can also help us be in touch with news and updates about this event too.
You may have a well defined ideas or research you would like to present at the event. Or you may have an idea that you would like feedback or guidance on. Either way please write to us with your intention to contribute.
Sometimes it is not easy to know where to start. We imagine the IndabaX Malawi 2025 event as an opportunity to learn from the collective knowledge that has been published already but perhaps it is less known by citizens and also to gather new knowledge by engaging with communities to learn from them about issues regarding biodiversity where they live. We will aim to formulate joint tasks with specific aims and we will invite contributions to that. If you are interested in that drop us an email at indabax@mubas.ac.mw.
What is Biodiversity?
Biodiversity, short for biological diversity, refers to the variety and variability of life on Earth. It includes:
- Genetic diversity – the variation of genes within species (e.g., different breeds of dogs or varieties of plants and crops),
- Species diversity – the variety of species within a habitat or ecosystem (e.g., birds, insects, mammals, and plants),
- Ecosystem diversity – the variety of ecosystems (e.g., forests, wetlands, coral reefs, deserts).
Biodiversity is essential for ecosystem stability, resilience, and the provision of ecosystem services like food, medicine, clean water, and air.
What is AI? And what kind of AI would this event cover?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to computer systems that can “think” and make decisions like humans—such as recognising patterns or objects in photos or predicting changes in the environment. This event has a focus on Machine Learning (ML), a type of AI that learns patterns from data to solve real-world problems and on remote sensing. However, other computer technologies such as mapping, image manipulations, data collection are also of interest.
AI tools aim to help scientists, conservationists, and even communities make better decisions to protect nature and biodiversity. For example, ML can be used to identify endangered animals in camera trap images, map deforestation from satellite pictures, or predict how weather or climate change may affect plant and animal species.
For example, AI can be used to estimate or evaluate deforestation from satellite images. Platforms like Global Forest Watch use AI to analyse satellite data and detect illegal logging or forest loss in real time, helping authorities respond faster.
At our research lab, Kuyesera AI, we recently developed a dataset with satellite images to detect damage to buildings caused by flash floods in Blantyre. The mwBTFreddy is available and you we can engage together in further utilising this dataset for ML experiments.
AI can help analyse satellite or aerial imagery to identify and assess the distribution of parks, gardens, and green roofs in cities—supporting better urban design for biodiversity. AI can recognise the sounds of birds, frogs, or bats in audio recordings. This helps scientists monitor species in forests without needing to be there physically. ML models can combine data on climate, terrain, and species sightings to predict where certain animals or plants are likely to live—and how that might shift with climate change.
Examples of citizen science
Storytelling
Storytelling is a powerful tool for communication, especially when combined with various media formats like text, visuals, audio, and maps. Biodiversity can often feel like a distant, scientific topic, but storytelling simplifies complex issues, turning them into understandable, relatable narratives. Stories can connect biodiversity issues to everyday experiences. We are looking at storytelling in local languages.
Community Tree Mapping and Health Reporting
You can organise a data collection activity in your university or school or community – for example you can catalog different types of plants, e.g. trees, near you, also air quality or you may document knowledge that people have about the environment. This can be done on paper but one can also use apps like TreeSnap or i-Tree to log trees in their neighborhoods, helping AI systems track tree species, health, and locations.
Mapping Green Spaces with Public Input
Citizens can contribute information about local parks, gardens, and green roofs using platforms like Green Space Mapper. AI uses this data to assess urban biodiversity, support city planning, and improve access to nature in communities.
Wildlife Sightings and Tracking
Urban residents can help monitor urban wildlife (such as foxes, raccoons, or even rare birds) by submitting sightings via apps. AI-powered tools can then track these species over time, helping wildlife researchers understand urban ecosystems better.
Why this theme?
This theme is not only appropriate given that the world we help look after and live in is very important to us all, but also that this year marks a series of important events:
- Malawi is the Chair of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group on Climate Change and hosted an LDC meeting between 15 to 16 April 2025 at Sunbird Mount Soche Hotel in Blantyre.
- Malawi is currently finalising a new National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan to build on the Action Plan II (2015 –2025)
- National Environmental Health Conference and Annual General Meeting, scheduled to take place from Thursday, August 21st to Friday, August 22nd, 2025, at the SUNBIRD LIVINGSTONIA HOTEL in Salima, Malawi.
- Malawi is part of the five year SBAPP Regional Project and hosts the annual meeting of the project partners this year in Salima in early June.
What is IndabaX Malawi?
IndabaX Malawi is one of the chapters of Deep Learning Indaba. It was started in 2019. The events took place yearly except in 2020. You can view information about past events here. These events focus on bringing together researchers, students and industry interested in leveraging AI and ML to solve practical problems in Malawi. The events have involved several universities in Malawi over the years and have attracted a varied audience.