At the beginning of April, the Global AI Summit on Africa was held in Kigali. The event was held by Rwanda's Fourth Industrial Revolution Centre (C4IR) and the Ministry of ICT and Innovation, in collaboration with the World Economic Forum.
After the global artificial intelligence action summit in Paris in February, the African-specific event was billed as an opportunity for the continent to begin stifling its own approach to critical policy issues.
Gathering together governments, business leaders, investors and heads of international institutions across the continent, the Summit sought to make concrete progress in “shaping Africa's role in the global AI economy.”
The event is also seen as an indication that African governments and organizations are determined to advance the continental path to manage the risks associated with this new technology, while simultaneously seizing potentially transformative possibilities across strategic sectors such as health, agriculture and finance.
Bilal Mateen, attendees at London-based healthcare company Path and Summit, told African businesses that “individual events don't solve all the problems, but these kinds of convening are needed to maintain momentum and energy.”
It's symbolically important
He added that the symbolism of the African-specific summit is important, especially given that conversations about AI are often dominated by established economic forces.
“When I saw the Baton Pass moving to the African continent, it was very important to see the continental leaders talking about a lot of opportunities and how to get there,” says Mateen. “Before you ask, there are only as many summits among the G7 countries as we can have. What about the rest of the world?”
For this reason, the summit was symbolically important, but was also announced before, during and after the global AI Summit on Africa. As for the use of AI, it has raised hope that the continent is beginning to move beyond discussion towards actual action.
Certainly, just before the event, the Zimbabwean telecom tycoon announced that his founding company, Cassava Technologies, had partnered with US technology giant Nvidia to build the “first AI factory” in Africa.
Cassava said it will deploy Nvidia's accelerated computing and AI software to data centres in South Africa by June this year, before expanding this to other data centres in Egypt, Kenya, Morocco and Nigeria.
This move is important as Africa's AI efforts have been hampered so far by a lack of affordable and effective computing resources. AI systems tend to be expensive because they are very power-hungry. Many African countries have questioned whether they have the infrastructure or economic capacity to invest in AI technology.
The infrastructure gap is still clear
“Africa has the ability to focus on AI. Given that we deal with basic things like adequate telephone infrastructure and electrical infrastructure, do we have the ability to focus on AI,” said Menzi Ndhlovu, a senior political and economic analyst for signal risk consultants at Cape Town.
“Before we start talking about AI and all these grand technical plans, we need to address developmental and fundamental infrastructure issues.”
“Computing issues have been identified as Africa's biggest challenge,” said Darlington Akogo, founder and CEO of Accra's MinoHealth AI Labs, who traveled to Kigali for the summit.
However, he was encouraged that the partnership announced between Cassava and Nvidia indicates that “a solution to this problem has begun to come to fruition.” Mateen also states that the move “finally makes realistic and concrete progress in dealing with the continent's computing capabilities.”
Investment has been announced
There was an announcement of excessive investment aimed at overcoming Africa's infrastructure challenges. Paula Ingavia, Rwanda's Minister of ICT Innovation, has signed a memorandum with Toleble Mandel, president of Global Health at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to establish the “Rwanda Artificial Intelligence Scaling Hub.”
Supported by $7.5 million over three years from the Gates Foundation, AI Scaling Hub aims to serve as a regional center for AI innovation, responsible for finding innovative ways to expand African-specific AI solutions in key sectors such as healthcare, agriculture and education.
When unveiling the MOU in Kigali, Mundel emphasized that the partnership aims to overcome the barriers present in AI adoption in Africa and help technology reach the communities that need it most.
The MasterCard Foundation has also announced support for comprehensive digital tools such as DeafCantalk, an AI-powered smartphone app. It aims to enable hearing impaired people to communicate in real time and show how AI can be expanded in Africa for social and economic benefits.
Akogo said the summit was successful in attracting “investments from developmental funds,” but suggests that if Africa wants to attract capital from global venture capital funds, it will require more work.
He says that he “meeted some VCs at the meeting and they were very aggressively looking for something to invest in,” but he believes this further complicates the startup's route to profitability with the high cost of running an AI initiative in Africa. “African trade tends to be far below ticket sizes, which suggests we are not competitive worldwide,” Akogo tells African businesses.
The Global AI Summit on Africa has also made progress in addressing disparities in existing AI technologies. AI tools are “trained” to make decisions based on datasets, but sources of African countries and individuals currently form a small portion of the data used in these systems.
This means that AI tools can often limit their ability to process local African languages, for example, or provide biased or harmful insights in African contexts.
Chenai Mutambasere, development economist at the African Centre for Economic Justice, said he was delighted to meet African business management director Alex Okosi.
“This is an important step to ensuring that AI technology is inclusive, contextually relevant and accessible to continental communities,” she adds. However, Mutambasere believes further action is needed on the part of regulators.
“There is an urgent need to establish a comprehensive framework for data governance in Africa. Data should be recognized not only as technical inputs, but as a key economic asset,” says Mutambasere. “As the continent accelerates its AI ambitions, there is a real risk that without proper management, the intrinsic value of African data could be overlooked or diluted.”
AI Declaration
The event reached its peak with representatives signing the “African Declaration on Artificial Intelligence.” This outlines the commitment on the part of continental leaders to support the adoption of national AI strategies and implement governance frameworks in line with the African Union's own AI strategies.
This rhetoric is expected to be supported by hardcaches as well. The resolution was passed to establish a $600 billion fund to build an AI ecosystem in Africa.
Mutambasere believes that “the Summit has successfully placed Africa as a key player in the global AI conversation, highlighting the unique demographic and economic opportunities of the continent that will become an important part of global economic development over the next 25 years.”
Akogo likewise welcomes movements made in Kigali, which at least set Africa on the road, to exploit the continent's AI potential and fake its own solutions for its own specific problems.
“The event served as a reminder to other parts of the world that Africa is very present within the AI ​​landscape,” he says.
