Research — Knowledge Mhodi

Research — 3 preprints

I study the systems I build and publish what I find, with the data in the open. Independent researcher, ORCID 0009-0006-4169-0783.

01Preprint·2026·Figshare

Assembling Continental Competition Without Co-Location: An Empirical Study of Cross-Border Participation in the Africa Chess League

Online platforms are often assumed to relax the travel constraint on organised chess, but the assumption is rarely tested against production data from a platform built to act on it. This single-case observational census of AFCL’s first 28 days — 612 arena entries, 300 registered members across 16 countries and 6,744 player-game appearances, benchmarked against FIDE’s 9,640 African standard-rated players — separates assembling cross-border competition, which proved achievable, from distributing participation broadly and deeply, which did not follow automatically.

cross-border participation
digital sport platforms
participation inequality
Africa

Read on Figshare

Data: data.afcl.africa

doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.33868711.v2

4 → 11

Countries per event, across twelve arenas

100%

Of member entries were in a multinational field

>50%

Of appearances came from the most active tenth

≈⅓

Returned at the next event, with no reliable trend

Entrants per AFCL arena

Arenas 1–16, August–September 2026. Source: data.afcl.africa.

02Preprint·2026·Figshare

Africa Chess League: Design, Architecture, and Deployment of a Digital Chess Competition Ecosystem for Africa

AFCL is designed as an integrated digital ecosystem rather than a standalone tournament application: several competitive activities, information services, a shared identity layer and a unified backend operate around one competition-management model. Lichess provides the chess-execution layer — identity, gameplay, tournament hosting and fair play — while AFCL independently manages competition structures, scoring rules, derived standings, ladders and public reporting. The paper documents the engineering decisions and system boundaries that make that composition possible.

systems architecture
Lichess integration
derived competition state
sports technology

Read on Figshare

Data: data.afcl.africa

doi:10.6084/m9.figshare.33868843.v1

4 mo

Of closed-beta testing before public launch

Two-month test seasons

Selected beta users

Aug 2026

Public launch

Returning entrants by arena

Share of each arena’s field that had entered an earlier one. Source: data.afcl.africa.

03Preprint·2025·Figshare

From Agricultural Support to Climate Resilience: A Data-Driven Framework for Agricultural Investment in Zimbabwe

Combining FAOSTAT crop statistics (2000–2023), ERA5 reanalysis climate data and provincial Agricultural Stress Index records from FAO GIEWS/ASIS, the study decomposes production into area and yield, examines rainfall–crop relationships and maps provincial drought exposure. Zimbabwe’s agricultural climate challenge turns out to be substantial rainfall variability rather than a significant decline — and the paper proposes a differentiated investment framework that links exposure, the mechanism of instability and the evidence required before choosing interventions.