Document Intelligence Platform Challenge

African governments and businesses drown in paper documents, with critical information trapped in filing cabinets and cardboard boxes that take days to find and process, creating massive inefficiencies and corruption opportunities. Government offices spend months processing simple applications because clerks must manually transcribe forms, businesses cannot quickly verify documents leading to fraud, and citizens lose vital records with no backups. A land registry in Ghana has millions of paper titles that cannot be searched, a court in Senegal takes weeks to find case files, and hospitals across the continent cannot quickly access patient records. Developers must create on-device document intelligence systems using OCR and NLP to extract information from government documents, classify forms automatically, validate data accuracy, and transform paper bureaucracies into searchable digital systems while maintaining privacy through local processing.

The Document Intelligence Platform Challenge seeks innovative solutions that automate the processing of the millions of paper documents that still dominate African bureaucracies and businesses. This challenge addresses the inefficiency of manual document handling that slows government services, delays business processes, and creates opportunities for corruption and error.

Participants will develop AI systems that can extract, classify, and process information from government documents, contracts, and forms using OCR and NLP technologies that work entirely on-device. The system must handle poor quality scans, handwritten text, multiple languages, and various document formats while maintaining data privacy through local processing.

Successful solutions will implement advanced OCR for challenging documents, intelligent field extraction, automatic document classification, and data validation. The system should understand document context, extract key information into structured formats, detect fraudulent or altered documents, and integrate with existing databases and workflows. It must handle everything from birth certificates to business licenses, from court documents to land titles.

We particularly value solutions that work with documents in African languages, handle low-quality phone camera captures, provide audit trails for legal compliance, and enable batch processing of historical archives. The platform should help governments digitize services, businesses automate paperwork, and citizens access their documents electronically, transforming paper-based bureaucracies into efficient digital systems.