In an outstanding achievement, two students from the North-West University (NWU) claimed victory for the second consecutive year in a national telecommunications industry competition.

Karabo Makau, a third-year BCom information systems student, and Ferdi Steyn, a BSc honours student in computer science, won first place in the 2024 Industry Solutions Challenge of the South African Telecommunication Networks and Applications Conference (SATNAC).

Competing on behalf of the NWU, they impressed the judges with their project, GreenPower_AI, which offers a recommendation model using artificial intelligence (AI) to address high energy consumption and CO₂ emissions in network sites.

Their solution, crafted for Telkom Openserve and similar data centres, harnessed Isolation Forest machine learning models to identify energy anomalies and improve sustainability.

Working from different campuses, Mahikeng and Potchefstroom respectively, Karabo and Ferdi combined their strengths in AI and data analysis.

“This year’s SATNAC reinforced AI’s crucial role in bridging the digital divide and emphasised the need for responsible AI governance,” Karabo says. He intends to integrate these insights into ethical AI solutions tailored to Africa’s unique challenges.

The 2023 SATNAC Industry Solutions Challenge, which Karabo and Ferdi also won, focused on load-shedding alternatives to unsupervised learning techniques for anomaly detection.

“These industry partnerships bridge academia and industry,” Karabo notes, “fuelling innovation and supporting Africa’s telecom sector towards sustainable growth.”

Their remarkable win highlights the NWU's commitment to practical, impactful AI solutions, particularly in the realm of energy optimisation in telecommunications.

Karabo Makau and Ferdi Steyn have won the SATNAC Industry Solutions Challenge for two years in a row.