iHub On AI Revolution In Africa

Greetings, Readers

April seemed to be AI month, with so many events and announcements centered around AI, but arguably the most significant being the Global AI Summit on Africa that happened in Rwanda. This inaugural summit served as the perfect stage for the announcement of Africa’s Declaration on Artificial Intelligence, which sought to harness the power of AI to drive innovation, competitiveness, and progress across Africa’s economies, industries, and societies. Secondly, the declaration aimed to position Africa as a global leader in the ethical, trustworthy, and inclusive adoption of AI. Central to this vision was fostering the sustainable and responsible design, development, and use of AI technologies across the continent.

But to make this happen, buy-in and support are needed in our march to transform this idyllic vision into reality. Starting with the following areas:

Talent: There is a critical need to develop a pipeline of AI practitioners who can meet the needs of the continent by establishing continent-wide AI education initiatives with curriculum development for youth at all levels. There also need for increased AI research capacity in higher learning institutions by strengthening PhD programs in higher educational institutions across Africa and sensitising the general public through AI awareness campaigns in an effort to increase AI literacy.

Compute: In a recent conversation held at iHUB where we sat down with Jude Mwenda, co-founder and CTO of Fastagger, one thing that kept coming up is that Africa is compute poor, and what this means is that Africa lacks the requisite computational infrastructure necessary for the development of a vibrant artificial intelligence economy. This is profoundly important in that it affects who can build AI, what kind of AI gets built, and who profits along the way. It’s encouraging that during the AI summit, there were commitments from Zimbabwean entrepreneur Strive Masiyiwa’s Cassava Technologies and Nvidia to bring supercomputer technology to the continent. Cassava plans to use Nvidia’s cutting-edge AI technology starting in South Africa with expansion planned across Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, and Nigeria.

Data: In the world of AI, data serves as the foundation upon which AI systems are built, influencing their effectiveness, reliability, and ethical implications. We need more African organizations contributing to data models, as a lot of the tools currently available haven't been trained on African specific data. This will require us to establish a framework for African open data sets and open AI models, facilitating the collection, digitization, and interoperability of key data sets in critical sectors, such as healthcare, agriculture, education, and climate resilience.

Significant effort in these three areas alongside other areas such as investment, safeguarding, ethics, and governance will create an environment where AI innovations can not only emerge but thrive.

As CcHUB we are already in the process of supporting AI-based innovators through the Sub-Saharan Africa EdTech Fund (SEF) Venture Studio, where we are working with startups and governments to co-create AI-powered Edtech solutions for foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN). Additionally, through our Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) project, we are looking to support AI startups tackling systemic challenges and create transformative opportunities across key sectors such as health, education, agriculture, public service delivery, and women empowerment.

The future is AI and Africa has to write its own chapter in the AI revolution while also using a community approach to make this future a reality.

Till next time, we thank you for being a valued part of our community. We appreciate your support and engagement!

William Chesoni,
Community Manager, iHUB.