2025 Datathon

About 2025 DIRISA Datathon

The 2025 challenge was held at The Century City Convention Centre in Cape Town from 30 November to 3 December 2025. Where 10x teams participated in the challenge from various institutions from South Africa.

The participants had to complete 3x challenges:

Challenge 1:

Customer Default Risk and Loan Portfolio Optimization

This challenge focuses on predicting customer default risk using telecommunications data and applying those predictions to make informed lending decisions. Participants will build a predictive model, estimate default probabilities, and optimize a loan portfolio to maximize expected profit while operating within a fixed capital budget.

Challenge 2:

Decode the Drive- Telemetry Data Analysis 

This challenge involves analysing real-world vehicle telemetry data to uncover patterns in speed, braking, acceleration, and driving behaviour. Participants will identify safety risks and performance trends, build a predictive or descriptive model to highlight high-risk events, and develop an interactive prototype such as a dashboard or app. The goal is to generate actionable insights that improve road safety, fleet management, and transport efficiency.

Challenge 3:

The students were tasked with creating a research poster based on challenge 2.

 The teams that participated in the datathon were:

    • African Leadership Academy (ALX) Africa
    • Mangosuthu University of Technology
    • Sol Plaatjie University
    • St John’s College
    • University of Limpopo
    • University of Mpumalanga
    • University of the Witwatersrand
    • University of Western Cape
    • Vaal University of Technology
    • Walter Sisulu University

The winners of the 2025 DIRISA Student Datathon Challenge were:

The top 3 winning teams in Challenge  2, sponsored by SASRIA,GIZ and Altron, are:

                     1. University of Limpopo

                     2.University of the Witwatersrand

                     3. Sol Plaatjie University

The top 3 Challenge 3 research poster winners, sponsored by SASRIA, GIZ and Altron, are:

                     1. African Leadership Xcelerator(Alx)

                     2. Sol Plaatjie University

                     3. University of the Witwatersrand

The winner of the Challenge 1 MATLAB Challenge, sponsored by MathWorks and Opti-Num Solutions, is:

                    1. Vaal University of Technology

 

Outstanding female participant won by Makhanane Mkhabela from ALX.

Outstanding male participant won by Bulumko Joka from St John’s College.

 

Prizes were sponsored by:

  • ALTRON
  • MATHWORKS
  • Opti-Num Solutions
  • SASRIA
  • GIZ