The rise of the application of Artificial Intelligence(AI) on the continent of Africa

Anye DEN WARREN
3 min readJan 3, 2021
Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Artificial Intelligence is presently making waves on the continent of Africa every new technology company is trying to see the possibility of integrating artificial intelligence in their process in other to increase efficiency and accuracy in the production chain.

According to Jackie Snow, the vast majority of cutting-edge AI is still done in places like Silicon Valley, London, and Shenzhen, but the fight for AI talent is real, and the rest of the world is starting to notice the rich AI possibilities in Africa. (2019). “Africans aren’t perched by,” says Karim Begur, the author of InstaDeep. Five years back he left his money work in London and came back to his local Tunisia to dispatch InstaDeep with two workstations. Presently the organization has five workplaces over the mainland and simply shut its arrangement a subsidizing for $7 million. “They are participating.”(Snow 2019).

Incompletely, socioeconomics is fate: 60% of the populace in Africa is younger than 25, and a developing number of understudies are investigating vocations in software engineering and AI. Colleges are attempting to fulfill the need. In South Africa, the Center for Artificial Intelligence Research (CAIR), established in 2011, works an exploration connect with hubs at five colleges. In Nairobi, Strathmore University set up the @iLabAfrica Research Center, which looks to advance front line explore in AI, among other developing innovations. What’s more, the University of Lagos in Nigeria as of late opened an AI Hub that will concentrate on profound learning and apparatuses to gather information.

Dr. Mercy Lung’aho, a nutritionist and research researcher at the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT) in Nairobi, is chipping away at building up an AI to spot nourishment emergencies crosswise over Africa before they occur. The framework, called NEWS, dissects satellite symbolism, just as information like precipitation, temperature, and vegetation wellbeing to make expectations about harvest wellbeing and nutritive esteem. Lung’aho says that AI could help individuals over the mainland, gave that specialists center around basic neighborhood issues.

“A system of African foundations of man-made consciousness, for instance, could hold the best gifts on the landmass, enroll world-class African researchers to handle AI challenges in the African setting, and work together with existing scholarly organizations,” Moustapha Cisse, the Google lead for the Accra office, wrote in Nature a year ago.

To prop the force up for the remainder of the year, the lead coordinators fund-raised and offered it to individuals who needed to do daylong IndabaX workshops and hackathons. A year ago, 13 nations participated; 26 workshops are on the books for this spring. Paquet said they offer assets to neighborhood coordinators, yet coordinators are allowed to plan the day around nearby needs.

In conclusion, the rate of AI use is increasing on the continent and there is a potential for more improvement and hopefully higher growth. As Moustapha Cisse puts it “If AI is to improve lives and reduce inequalities, we must build expertise beyond the present-day centers of innovation, says Moustapha Cisse.” (Cisse, 2018) Indeed the future is bright on the continent in terms of the use and implementation of artificial intelligence.

Reference list

Cisse, M. (2018). Look to Africa for Advanced Artificial intelligence.

Snow, J. (2019). How Africa is seizing an Artificial intelligence opportunity. Lagos.

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