The key challenges that Africa is facing are best expressed through the United Nations’ sustainable development goals, which include no hunger, no poverty, no inequality, climate action, quality education, clean water, and sanitation, among other things. These challenges keep Africans trapped in a cycle of poverty and arrested development.
The good news is that digital technology in general, and artificial intelligence (AI) in particular, can assist in making the SDG goals a reality, thereby lifting Africa out of widespread poverty and inequality. This is according to Prof Alistair Mokoena, the country director of Google South Africa, during his online seminar presentation on Monday, 25 March 2024.
Organised by the North-West University (NWU) Business School, the online seminar aimed to explore ways in which AI can help drive the African economy. Prof Mokoena said Africa, a continent where 480 million people live below the poverty line, desperately needs exponential growth to achieve economic prosperity, which will lead to significant improvements in the living standards of the people.
With over 1,3 billion Africans on the continent, there are an estimated 500 million individuals who are active on the internet. However, approximately 800 million Africans have never used the internet. "We need to bring everyone online. No one should be left behind. We need to solve problems for universal internet access by investing in digital infrastructure, delivering products that are suitable not only for the world but for Africa. We need to ensure that every language and every currency in Africa is represented on the internet. This is why products like Google Translate are crucial,” Prof Mokoena added.
As we pursue the roll-out of AI, we need to proceed with caution to ensure that AI is used only for positive and beneficial reasons, and not adapted for disreputable ends. AI therefore needs to be regulated so that all players ensure that it is safe and useful for society. To avoid the potential spread of fraudulent, biased and misinformation, Africa must ensure it builds guardrails into AI platforms.
Given that more Africans should become internet users – which will potentially grow e-commerce – cybersecurity needs to be a top priority. To this end, Prof Mokoena said, Google recently launched the Africa Online Safety Platform, and it tackles issues such as cybercrime, online bullying, and phishing swindles.
To increase internet penetration and to improve bandwidth on the African continent, Google announced the launch of its Equiano subsea cable in 2022. Next, the cloud region in Africa was launched in 2023. These two infrastructural investments will increase internet speed, reduce wholesale internet prices by 20%, add just over 200 000 indirect jobs – and close to $10 billion to South Africa’s gross domestic product.
Over 6 million South Africans go to bed hungry every night, while 10 million tons of food go to waste. Prof Mokoena said digital technology can assist by connecting excess food with hungry mouths. In the same vein, AI is used to drive food security by improving crop yield, helping with crop disease management, as well predicting locust infestation and flood forecasting.
Using a United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) report as a source, Prof Mokoena declared that 50 million African children lack access to education. This is upsetting, considering that 23% of the world’s youth live on the African continent today, and 33% of the world’s youth will come from Africa by 2050.
In addition, Prof Mokoena urged that AI should be used to improve educational outcomes, for example, advancing teacher training, and personalising learning to adapt it to each scholar’s learning style.
“Through AI, we can place tutors in the palm of each student’s and learner’s hand. The same goes for improving health outcomes,” Prof Mokoena said. He added: “Google’s Alphafold AI platform has made all 200 million known protein structure predictions accessible to a million scientists around the world. This platform helps in the development of medicines to fight antibiotic resistance and diseases like malaria.”
Granting that AI will replace selected jobs by automating repetitive tasks, Prof Mokoena stated that the solution lies in reskilling workers and repurposing roles, and not in resisting AI. “You should not fear machines taking away your business, you should fear your competitor using AI better than you. Businesses that have used AI have reported up to a 30% cost reduction and about 20% revenue growth.”
The youth are digital natives, and they want to compete with the rest of the world. Making technology affordable and accessible will grant them that opportunity.
