AI: The African Side

Happy Monday!

In 2007, Vodafone's Kenyan subsidiary, Safaricom, launched a revolutionary financial service that changed how people in Kenya and beyond conducted financial transactions. The service, M-Pesa, was a mobile money transfer and financial services platform that targeted people, particularly in areas with limited access, to traditional banking services.

M-Pesa's initial goal was simple: use telecommunications, an emerging technology, to address the challenges of financial exclusion in Kenya. And... it worked! M-Pesa took advantage of a tool Kenyans already had - mobile phones to solve a problem that had been pestering them for decades - financial inclusion. Today, it boasts arguably the most robust financial technology system globally.

Then 10 years later, in 2017, the Ghanaian government launched the Ghana Post GPS, which marked a significant milestone in the country's efforts to establish a comprehensive and accurate digital addressing system. Like mPesa, it took advantage of the Global Positioning System (GPS) to digitally map the entire country and generate digital addresses of locations using their exact latitude and longitudes. Implementation has been slow, but again, this promises to be the most robust addressing system globally.

In the final part of four of my fully-fledged thoughts about Artificial intelligence, I'm drawing inspiration from success stories like mPesa and the Ghana Post GPS system, which have revolutionized the financial sector and redefined addressing systems, respectively, to argue that the continent has the opportunity to make a lot more progress using cutting-edge technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence (AI).

If you missed the last edition, AI: The Nuances, here's a summary:

- AI, like "The Monkey's Paw" story, can fulfil requests with unintended consequences. It has immense potential in medicine, education, agriculture and more, but its power brings concerns about extinction-level risks.

- An AI may lack an understanding of human nuances, leading to harmful outcomes. The fear is it might excel at precisely what we ask but cause harm.

- While AI can disrupt jobs, history shows it can also create new opportunities, complementing human abilities.

TL;DR

• In 2007, Safaricom launched M-Pesa, revolutionizing financial services in Kenya, while in 2017, Ghana introduced the Ghana Post GPS for accurate digital addressing. Success stories like these highlight Africa's potential to harness AI for progress.
• AI could enhance crop yields, healthcare, education, financial services and more in Africa.
• Steps for realizing AI's potential include revamping education, expanding broadband coverage, and ensuring accessible data.
• A trifecta of factors - massive storage, computing power, and connectivity - is crucial for AI's success in Africa. Massive storage infrastructure is needed to manage the growing data demand. Massive computing resources accelerate AI development through speedy data analysis and model training. Improved broadband connectivity is essential for real-time data access and collaboration.
• Africa's journey in AI requires integrating these components to drive technological advancements and progress.

Africa and AI

AI presents us with a powerful toolset to address some of the continent's most persistent challenges head-on. Allow me room to play with your imagination for a bit.

Imagine a future where:

• The continent maximises its ability to improve crop yields, reduce agricultural wastage and improve its food security.
• Everyone on the continent has access to quality, tailored health care and protection from disease outbreaks and more.
• Learners on the continent have access to personalised and interactive learning experiences with precise and immediate feedback.
• Financial services on the continent are more secure, efficient, and accessible, rapidly speeding up economic growth and financial inclusion.

Sounds sweet. Right? These and more are possible in Africa with AI.

However, realizing the full potential of AI requires us to take strategic steps, a few of which are listed below:

Revamped Education: To effectively harness the power of AI, we need to teach our people what AI is and the benefits we stand to gain from it. Just as our education systems rapidly embraced courses in telecommunications, they have to adapt quickly, teaching people not only how to build, but how to USE AI tools. There's little to no point in building AI tools when the masses do not know how to use them.

Expanded Broadband Coverage: While educating our people on how to use AI tools, we need to ensure that they can access them in the first place. And that is where reliable internet connectivity comes in. Reliable internet connectivity is a cornerstone for accessing AI-driven applications and services. Broadband access, especially in rural areas, must be rapidly expanded to bridge the digital divide.

Accessible Data: The heart of AI lies in data. For AI systems to be diverse and robust, data needs to be readily available, both in terms of volume and variety. We need to simplify data collection and processing while ensuring that ethical and privacy concerns are met. The (nonsensitive) data collection needs to be done in a collaborative and open manner that gives researchers and developers access to a broader range of information. This is vital to fostering the development of AI models that can effectively address the continent's unique challenges and opportunities.

The Foundation of AI-Driven Transformation

A trifecta of factors - massive storage, massive computing power, and massive connectivity will be crucial in unleashing AI's potential in Africa.

1. Massive Storage: In the digital age, data has become the lifeblood of innovation, propelling industries forward and reshaping economies. This surge in data generation, particularly fueled by the proliferation of the internet and social media has sparked an urgent need for extensive storage infrastructure. If the continent will make any progress in AI, we need robust data centres and storage solutions to support not only the existing data but also the exponential growth that is anticipated in the coming years.
2. Massive Computing: In AI: The Boom, we learned that AI processes demand significant computational power. AI's computational demands necessitate access to high-performance computing resources that can process intricate algorithms at lightning speed. High-performance computing resources enable rapid data analysis and model training, and this in turn accelerates AI's development.
3. Massive Connectivity/Broadband: View broadband as the pipeline that connects end users of AI tools to the services created by AI developers. We need to ensure that the pipelines established are larger and more capable as people must be brought online before they can reap the full package of AI. Seamless connectivity ensures that data can be accessed, shared, and analyzed in real-time, fostering collaborative AI initiatives across the continent.

Africa's journey toward harnessing AI's transformative power hinges on its ability to integrate these three crucial components, creating an ecosystem that not only keeps pace with technological advancements but also drives them.

About Ponder

Ponder, my blog, is my attempt to share my random thoughts with you to inspire you, cause you to challenge your thinking and even make you laugh (Hopefully).

With ponder, you get to explore Minimalism, Christianity, Science, Graphic Design, an annoying appreciation of detail and out-of-the-box thinking. You get to explore all of these from the perspective of an African.

There’s more on my website: joshwordey.org/blog