 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to the AI for Good Global Summit, all year, always online. My name is Ksenia Fonten from the International Telecommunication Union in Geneva, and I have the privilege of introducing today's webinar on AI-driving digital divides and the future of African economies. The ITU is the United Nations Specialized Agency for Information and Communication Technologies, and we are also the organizer of the AI for Good Global Summit alongside Express Foundation and in partnership with 36 UN sister agencies, ACM, and Switzerland, our co-convener. The goal of the summit is to identify practical applications of AI to advance the sustainable development goals and scale those solutions for global impact. And with our online weekly programming, we are trying to reach even more people across the globe. So please let us know where you are calling from, from which country or which city. You can use the chat function to communicate. Please make sure that you send your message to our panelists and attendees. If you wish to ask a question, please use the Q&A function. The moderator will select and read out the questions to the speakers. And we are particularly counting on your participation to create a very interactive session. And now I have the pleasure of introducing our moderator, Dr. John Kamara, the Director of Machine Intelligence Institute of Africa and the founder of AFIIA Record. John, welcome. Hello. Hello. How are you? Good. Thank you. How are you, John? Very, very well. Glad to be here from Nairobi. It's evening time here and we're happy to join the rest of the world. So welcome, everyone, to the ITU Africa Summit. We're excited to be here today. And we are going to jump right in because we believe that AI, it is definitely the future for Africa as an emerging continent and all the economies emerging out of this economy. We have some amazing people on the panel today. I'm sure you've seen a number of the marketing materials that have gone out from the ITU and a number of our esteemed guests. But our first keynote speaker is a person of excellence, a woman who has made a lot of contribution to the development of digital technologies in South Africa and allow me to welcome Minister Stella Tenbezi Abrams from the Republic of South Africa and she's the Minister for Communication and Digital Technologies. Minister. Thank you so much and good afternoon. Of course I'm taking the South African time and I just want to say greetings to everyone who's listening to us today and thank you so much for joining us in this important topic that all nations are really trying their best to make sure that we do our best. Not only as governments, but also as the citizens of the country. My name is Stella Tenbezi Abrams as it has been introduced. I'm the Minister responsible for communication and digital technologies in South Africa. And of course fellow participants, the topic as we all know, which talks to the future of work in Africa with digital divide. Of course we're looking at the AI opportunities and challenges to say what is it that we should do or what is it that we're not doing right in order to liberate on the opportunities that are presented by the artificial intelligence. Of course it is my pleasure to engage with yourselves this afternoon and as we fashionable talk about building the digital economy which requires a digital society research has indicated that there's a lot that we need to do in order to achieve that. As we talk about research that there's a need that we need to do, but the advantage once more is the fact that especially in Africa there isn't much investment that we have done for us to say we're comfortable with the status quo or we reconsidering because we've already invested a lot. We are now presented with an opportunity to invest for the future to say how best can we liberate on the artificial intelligence technologies in order to help our countries grow their economies. As I say this the basic thing of course as a person from government is to make sure that we create an enabling environment and the basic thing creating an enabling environment starts with the policy. So there's a need for all of us as policy makers to make sure that we develop policies, AI policies as the different countries in Africa to say how would we then plan to work on this artificial intelligence to resolve some of the challenges that we have, but also to enable an environment where we can build on that you are good at. As I'm speaking from South Africa if I were to make an example, everybody that we come from the land of gold and diamond and of course you also have messages fans I can't leave that behind but what people are not looking at as we have seen currently that COVID when it hit us if I were to make an example, when it hit us it showed us that all the personnel that we have the unskilled labor can one day lose a job and that's a reality as they lose a job that translate to production levels and if you talk about production levels it impacts on the economy and therefore as the people that are responsible for policies how do you make sure that we do appreciate that there are technologies that can help us improve the production levels in order to turn around our economies. I made an example with mine that is we have lots of unskilled people or labor in that sector artificial intelligence has a key role to play. As much as most people talk about the threat that is imposed by the the fourth industrial revolution technologies are the threat to jobs. One thing that we have not paid much attention on in terms of investment and providing clear directives is that of leveraging on the new jobs that can be built utilizing artificial intelligence and of course as I spoke about policy there's been lots of news again people talking about the ethics of the algorithms that are being used because it is of no value to us as Africans if when we look for particular information it doesn't talk to who we are or it's not a true reflection of what we stand for which is what we have seen in the previous regimes whereby our story has to be told in a particular manner that's used the storyteller and definitely we have not been telling the stories. Now we presented with an opportunity to say just from programming leather how do you make sure that we get involved how do you make sure that we have people and policies that must look into the ethics of the algorithms so that as we leverage on the usage of artificial intelligence our people do not get to experience what they experienced in the past that have been discriminated against in the economy and in the knowledge economy that we're talking about. So that's just one component and of course key to the enablement that we're talking about is that that we're all agree that it matters data is the new oil others put it like that I prefer data is the new oxygen because for us to do everything it really requires that data how we use it has an impact whether positively or negatively to whatever that we want to do. Therefore once more as governments we are then faced with the challenge of ensuring that just like the EU has done and other regions we come up with our own data policies that must also help create enabling environment for innovators for small businesses and other in industries to utilize them for economic aspects. So this it's not something that can just be done by government alone. This is why in South Africa when President Ramaphosa took a decision to establish the Presidential Commission of the Fourth Industrial Revolution said he said I really need a group of experts who will not be looking only at technologies but to be looking into the entire ecosystem of human beings that people must eat people must work people must close then we have minerals as I have said and therefore we need everything that goes with it to make sure that these experts can then meet together and provide a blueprint document to say where to South Africa and as we do that in South Africa to say we have channeled our energies to say the Commission has presented this report to the president who are waiting for its final adoption but the most exciting thing again came when President Ramaphosa was appointed the Chairperson of the EU which gave us again another opportunity as South Africa to say what is it that we can build on that we see that has worked not only in South Africa but also in other states how would we make sure that we bring all of the African states together in the benefit of Africans both in Africa and in the diaspora utilizing the expertise that they have as we did that of course the EU has its own working group on artificial intelligence the smart Africa grouping again has its own artificial intelligence working group which is chaired by yours truly and the president made a very big announcement that made us very happy to say as part of his legacy project he would really like to leave a legacy whereby we he has established an Africa AI forum whereby I would bring everybody in the forum those that met in terms of the expertise when I say everybody the expertise that are required from all the member states of the EU and therefore to make sure that you will have his own AI strategy that must help guide the different member states in ensuring that this time Africa does not mess up I have a phrase that I like so much that I borrowed from Mao Zedong when he really decided to say it's high time that China takes leadership and technologies the charge and surpass phrase and I really believe that is Africa we give an opportunity to really do that and if we are to charge and surpass it means we've got to stop being consumers of the technologies that come from somewhere but we also have to be inventors which is why for us it becomes crucial to do just like our countries have done and other regions to say we identify AI is a key technology that we think we can leverage on to change the economic status and social being of the people of the African continent as we do that of course we are again cognizant of the fact that we have poor infrastructure in terms of the digital infrastructure which is a crucial talent that is government do our face with as we saw COVID-19 hitting us and people were forced to stay out of jobs away from offices reality some even for those that have believed that as governments we really do not have to invest much in connectivity because people don't eat internet as you would listen to some believing so but it was proven that we can have the best spend within the offices you can have the best technologies in the offices of beautiful offices but there may be situations or scenarios as we have seen that we're not able to come to work and that presented a great opportunity for us in the digital space to say now it is people that are calling upon us to say we see this infrastructure that we have is not sufficient we do want to make sure that we access digital services but we cannot because of the poor infrastructure or non availability of of the infrastructure at all was as much as we're talking about poor infrastructure there are still areas that you do not have connectivity at all and again we are privileged as as Africa again because we decided to build on what we have to say as we have the broadband commission what what strategies therefore we can employ to make sure that we partner with everyone and be able to say we're gonna invest in connectivity first treating connectivity as a basic human right is one thing that we are saying we all agree that it needs to be done if we do agree that people can live without money COVID has shown us that people can live without internet where they have lived we've really seen where there's been the divide and the disadvantages when even we had to provide education which we all agree is a priority of any responsible government and people could not access that I'm talking about the policies that we make as government I'm talking about strategies that we employ but I'm talking about resources at the same time because they go together we may have great policies if then money and resources are not following that then it would mean that we're not really gonna leverage on the technologies that we have I spoke about the impact of COVID as we have experienced it in the past months again very clear in the health sector if I were to make an example with them whereby we all agree that the shortage of doctors we've seen it our research again indicates that we need about 1.2 million doctors in Africa for us to be able to deal with the virus that we're looking at and really is that that we do not have currently and as the people in the digital technology space our was is to say how do we leverage on the deployment of artificial intelligence because people have cell phones with themselves people have devices with themselves how do we make sure that they can use that in order to change their social status and access the basic services that they must access without us going to get doctors where we're not gonna find we've gone to Cuba we've gone to other countries that we're saying come help us but there is the artificial intelligence that we all agree that it can play a major role as I'm talking about that again it is very clear that as I spoke about the broadband infrastructure there's also the issue of the energy capabilities but it's important to balance energy investment because it's part of the infrastructure because when energy is not stable once more it then impacts on the quality of the connectivity that would need and therefore automatically it it could it it impacts negatively on the kind of service that we must provide we talk about devices people must access the services through devices once more Africa there's been a consumer of all the devices that we're talking about and we really believe that you are presented with an opportunity that we can really come up with our own that we are talking about bridging the gap in terms of the jobs that will be lost but we can invest in the new opportunities that are there and as I said it is only Africa that has lots of people who are not connected it is only Africa that has a high digital illiteracy rate and therefore investing in the skills investing in the infrastructure including the devices becomes key as I talk about infrastructure earlier on I mentioned the fact that we all agree that data is the new oil but data has to be stored which means there's a need for us to invest in data center in data centers and cloud storage and as we do that again we all agree there's a need for us to leverage on the artificial intelligence to be able to do certain things in order to create the new economies that we're talking about when I spoke about what we have in the continent I mentioned the broadband commission of course we also have the program for infrastructure development in Africa Peter which is also looking at bridging the infrastructure gap and identifying of course the financing models for sustainable broadband deployment this is something governments cannot do our loan collection this is something that requires all industries and government all it has to do is to create enabling environment whereby we have to a greater particular point that's why I said that policymaking becomes very important that identification of sectors that can really turn around the economy and resourcing those is very important because if we're going to say we're calling upon the private sector to come and invest in infrastructure in terms of connectivity we've got to make sure that the environment enables that therefore we've got to relax certain regulations we've got to make sure that we look at tax incentives and others in order to make sure that indeed the environment for investment in Africa is conducive for investors to come and do it if we are to succeed in this journey we want to partake on and of course again as we talk about the jobs that we're losing McKenzie mentions a very important thing if I were to be specific on South Africa again to say we stand to create about four comma five million new jobs if we invest in technologies and connectivity but as you talk about the the new jobs that we're going to create they also mentioned the fact about three comma three million jobs to be lost this is what takes us to the need to say we've got to prioritize skills development we've got to upscale our existing personnel we've got to make sure that we change our curriculum which in most cases has been designed for our people to just consume content and go and look for jobs this is an economy that requires innovators and small businesses that must be given an opportunity to turn things around people who must provide solutions instead of people who must just come and theorize what the framework says if you look at the banks they're also affected and as I'm mentioning this I keep on saying we see AI paying a critical role because whether you're going to take or talk about automated banks but they're going to talk about the minds and everything artificial intelligence plays a new role and therefore it becomes a key technology that we believe that it can change the social economic status of our people and therefore of our countries again we've had in South Africa the likes of Edcon who recently announced that they stand to lose jobs and of course there's people in the space who like they really do not have to lose jobs if they don't have to be paying those huge sums in terms of property apologies to those that are in property business but they can do and they can offer the services that they offer and risk skill and up skill the personal that they have for call centers for for e-commerce platform and then they still get sales people as we have seen in other countries so we still believe that artificial intelligence can really turn things around if we go back again to the what the impact of COVID minister we're almost if you could just I mean we'll enjoy your conversation but before I just wanted to ask you one question and that what is this an African government doing in the health space in terms of AI and how is that helping the fight for COVID similar to what we're doing here in tenure with the likes of our favorite and other companies that are solving problems the private sector thank you thank you of course the South Africa one of the key things that we did when we hit by the COVID was to establish the ICT work streams we spoke to all sectors to identify themselves and get organized and I must really command the work that has been done by the ICT work streams which has provided more solutions to the health department to say we can deploy your artificial intelligence technologies in terms of how you will help in terms of track track and tracing of the people who have been tested positive which is now has more what has moved from the Department of Communications to the Department of Justice but working with the Department of Science and Innovation that's one of the things and of course in we do have the Center for Artificial Intelligence Research which does research work and has been working closely with the department to say the Department of Health this is how we can assist in terms of technologies there's been lots of solutions and applications that have been provided including blockchain technologies I know the teams are right now working on a platform where you get access to free information on COVID including the material that you need to access and pointing you to where you can go and test and all that has been done by the color through the collaborative efforts of South African government and its own industries and as I said amongst those industries it is the ICT work stream thank you very much that is absolutely fantastic it's a pleasure to have you as a keynote opening speaker and I think a lot of the audience has learned quite a lot about what is happening it's a conversation I want to pick up with you later around the health infrastructure in South Africa if you allow me I will get in touch with you later so we can also share more information with the rest of the world next is our next thank you very much Minister our next presenter is Alex Sado Alex works for Alex is with Alliance for AI and he has been involved in machine education in AI in Africa for quite a while and he's going to share with us some of his thoughts about how Africa can leapfrog using artificial intelligence in Alliance for development of AI and also in Alliance for collaborative work for startups and the ecosystem Alex definitely thank you very much John for the introduction and it's always an inspiration to listen to your minister as always I will go ahead and share my screen as I will be showing you all presentation so I will just try to work that here for a moment okay fantastic so I believe you should be able to see my screen great well I will start off with a story for you guys right the year is 2018 and Nick Tombe Nomsokana and myself were sitting around the table basking in our perceived success Nick from Cameroon was an applied physics PhD and data scientist crafting energy and innovation policy for the United States government and also from South Africa she is a nuclear physicist turned fiber optics entrepreneur deploying infrastructure in her country to reduce the cost of internet hi base in California where I'm calling you from was guiding us with Nvidia and guiding the top five largest companies in the entire world to deploy AI solutions that billions of people we use this all looked exciting for humanity until we had this chilling realization that there was an insurmountable gap that was growing in the quality of life that humans live and this was this was because of the way people are applying the technologies that we're building in that in the near future being wealthy won't be enough for you to escape this gap the only way was that you'd have to increase the representation of people who look like you at the table where AI is built as this I just shared we you probably now see a version of this reality through COVID-19 it has come to expose this gap to more people for example as a rich person in Nigeria you can't now simply send your kids to America for school when the schools are too much terrible similarly you can't escape the poor healthcare systems in your country and fly to London when you are sick and as a rich person the superiority systems are getting built will still spot you as a black person and oddly as a criminal many of you wish for COVID-19 to end so all of this will go away but I said to you that if the current application of AI continues because you don't do anything about it this problem will last more than three decades until we are at the mercy of white and Chinese male engineers and researchers we could not wait that day in 2018 we have to act fast you cannot wait today you have to act now our purpose is a Mandela since we have all the South Africa's in the room except I have agreed I have discovered the secrets that after climbing a great hill one only finds that there are many more hills to climb make sure to pause and enjoy the view then march on because with freedom comes great responsibility so to that I shared that last year at this powerful global summit there were two men representing Africa handing out pamphlets they are Nick Bradshaw and John Kamara who is moderating so after that myself Nick Selena Dr. Amare in America we set out on the journey to convince our great friends at the ITU that it was crucial for African innovators to be at this table so the world has an opportunity to benefit from the groundbreaking work that's happening on our continent today the ITU has three as agreed to have three sessions with up to 15 speakers of African descent 60% of this particular one we help organize our women so this is some great progress it has been 500 years but our voices edge ever closer returning to the global innovation table we will use it to speak not just for black people and women but for Latin Americans for Asians for Europeans and people in forgotten American states we must stop our cycle of waiting for the world to change we must stop waiting for our governments to magically do something on their own without our support we must stop waiting for large global organizations to increase the representation of India staff because evidence shows that they don't have the motivation we must stop waiting because for once the same technology that trans that threatens our relevance also provides us an opening to demonstrate a new path for its progression AI for basic human needs if I'm going to progress here I'm a did not wait when he went from discussing with my organization three years ago about finding mentors for his family start up in Nigeria to now multiplying the yields of over 25,000 farmers in that country and in him the current number 24 spots the right next to a liquid equity as the top disruptor list in Africa did not wait when he set up Tambua Health in Kenya to down the atrocious course of MRI machines by designing an AI tool that on a phone such that you could place that phone on the back of a patient it collects sound waves from their lungs and uses those waves to create images that medical practitioners can use to diagnose disease you can imagine how much cheaper that is than buying an MRI that costs the same as building four hospitals in Kenya we must not wait now let's talk about the other villain the digital divide you see the transformation is like a fast-moving train from the platform some people can stretch their legs and get on the easy others have not been able to they are divided from the digital world and all his opportunities the 30 million of those people are actually in the United States of America by the way so once again it's a problem that we share together as a globe and should address together in parts of Africa we obviously have small percentages who have access and ability to pay comfortably for this internet they are a very important group but our challenge today is to come up with a plan that will beat that divide down this decade my fellow panelists I place your logos on the on the chat to we'll see how you think about that when we have our discussions I spoke about this very topic at the Pan-African conference in Egypt last December and was told that Africa was too behind to talk about AI my response was that if you look at Africa in short periods you will find problems but if you look at it decade to decade you will find commendable growth growth that we can build on to design the future of our economies you agree but our Africans working at key positions for key organizations around the world so our organization Alliance for Africa's intelligence Alliance for AI for short is laser focused on the future of our lives our approach is to tap into Africa's smartest minds around the world to get people acting on crucial matters that can't wait experimenting and piloting programs until for-profit bodies governments or large organizations pick them up to scale them our key principles are as you see hashtag one brain hashtag love and hashtag each one teach to the old plan was that leaders today have a focus on consumers they think you know how do we find a hundred billion dollars to borrow so we provide electricity and internet so people can consume that is important but this is solving the equation a little backwards hence it hasn't worked properly for over 20 years it doesn't start with small steps from the people that cascade into a domino effect I like to call it the AI revolution is not about consumers it's about builders AI is today we will shift the time from being consumers and secrets of aid towards being builders of solution so the alliance for AI path to initiating your four-ir domino effect wherever you are in the world we think you should identify your builders to activate them you should meet the learners where they are and there's an x-factor which you will tell me about at the end of this speech super computers the builders need super computers and any green policy we must select these builders those in our nations that want to activate even if it's just five companies I mean China started with Alibaba by June your builders need these things to succeed there's already progress as African innovators read over one million dollars last year connectivity cost is going on over time if you look at it decade to decade and mobile penetration is growing up but we are ready for the next wave I hope strive my issue is listening because the last wave it was started by him and created millions of jobs which was mobile the next wave is indeed super computers these you can think of them as very powerful laptops to a room filled with powerful machines the world didn't have more than AI that we are all talking about 2012 when a GPU supercomputer started getting used to do AI so how can Africa innovators build competitive AI without much easier access to supercomputers when their counterparts around the world have this easy you see it will take Africa innovator two months to train a complex but important and useful AI model that will only take the account about a few hours in San Francisco with a small supercomputer not even a big one there's just one supercomputer in Africa today and is built and managed by my good friend happy story in South Africa I was involved in the deployment of every single NVIDIA GPU supercomputer in the cloud today so my evolving perspective is that when you are deploying your products and people are paying for it yes you can do that on the cloud but when you are learning and experimenting to build it's crazy to use the cloud that you're paying for when you're competition in America have hundreds of thousands of free cloud credits or even work with your governments to build supercomputers so we need to solve this for our builders in Africa you can start this with a small pilot either less than a hundred thousand dollars for one startup hub with C5 companies or five hundred thousand dollars for a city or go ten million dollars to pilot this across four corners of the continent I mean we already spent 50 billion dollars to build infrastructure as minister shared or we can cut out a little slice just to test this whole concept of supercomputing we already have a group of Africans deploying these very machines so Alex yes Alex in yes in the interest of time and I need you to sort of wrap up real quick yes yes I can go through this if you give me three more minutes I will go through these pretty much the supercomputing for their builders are important the education piece is incredibly important as well we have to meet the learners where they are you don't have to use the digital internet all the time there's whatsapp there are radio there's television we at Alliance for AI are working we've got Rose Gasiccio over in Kenya she's not she's a little older than 20 but she's designing what we call a distributed crowd healing future of work learning plan where she has a library of capabilities important to the future Dr. Maripio will talk more about this and my mentor and Dr. Cases of Francisco as well and we give this word to people to use that to learn in schools it's already been piloted in Africa Leadership University in Rwanda Africa Science Academy in Ghana and in subcontinent Asia so the final X factor is really you you have to be the market and buy African solutions let's do away with the current and different narrative where that major news outlets propel that says Africa are only seekers of aid and not buyers of solutions I mean with COVID-19 Africans have built a number of solutions that the world is not looking at so the domino effect as I close is about creating thriving environment for the sharpest innovators running campaigns that encourage local and international purchase of their offerings otherwise there's no future of work if you're not buying African tools completely new industries will get enabled which will transform your societies to the point where you have enough welfare free thinking human beings who will make up a majority of your governments a responsible government who needs you to your future so the very last slide here but the last one here will continue to be one of the psychics of the government ensuring we the grassroot people are making progress in Africa in America Brazil and all the forgotten minorities of the world you see we cannot fail we will only succeed if you join the movement we have space for volunteers including musicians and sports players you should join and those who want to fund our blueprint so we scale these programs the final quote here before you continue John thank you Alex from uh well John if you let me just close with this one right Dr Martin Luther King Jr said that is only when it is dark enough that you will see the stars it's dark right now with COVID-19 lockdowns and so if you're a star I implore you to step out and be the star that the world will never forget thank you over to you John thank you very much Alex on that note be the star which is an important important vision for the continent and I think just to echo what Alex has said there are a number of solutions that are coming out of Africa in the AI space and if you look at COVID-19 COVID-19 presents an opportunity for our governments to actually look inward and see what solutions that our own entrepreneurs are startups our private sectors are building that actually help this particular pandemic and every other industry and it also allows us to be able to buy from our own and effectively encourage our own startups to be able to actually do be part of the solution rather than always having to import solutions from everywhere in the world so I do the college the government folks who are listening here to to look inwards in your countries and give a number of these startups a chance to actually prove that they can be part of the solution because this is why we're saying the startup ecosystem is the foundation for artificial intelligence and growth in Africa according to minister Stellar earlier on now we're going to move on swiftly and we're going to be talking to Dr Marafe who has been a pioneer for education and who is also one of the key women who influenced me a lot in regards to how you use artificial intelligence to solve problems in education and also how you look at the African ecosystem and create the process based learning rather than outcome based learning that allows us to create artificial intelligence models or artificial intelligence solutions that even help us train our own education system so I'm going to pass it over to Dr Marafe please to welcome her from about the United States headquarters thank you very much um thank you very much Dr Kamara and thanks for having me and I thank the the first two previous speakers and let me build on what Dr Tzado kept saying that the future is now Africa cannot wait but at the same time we have to take learners from where they are my focus is on the future of AI in education in Africa with a focus on young working population and I in order for us to talk about the future we have to first acknowledge as the honorable minister also noted when she was talking about our feeble investment in infrastructure and AI we have to acknowledge where we are if we say the future is now where are we in education in Africa today and let me acknowledge that a lot of progress has been registered especially since the education for all movement but we are not sitting at a comfortable launching pad and there we have to accept um Africa has the youngest one of the youngest populations in the world when you look at people who are between 15 to 24 years constituting about 16 percent of the population but importantly that by 2025 projections are that the 15 to 24 year olds will increase from the 226 million they were in 2015 uh by they will double or a little bit more than double the second part is if you look at our Z to 15 years old they account for a little over 40 percent so Africa is young but the moral of the story is that the shot of it is that Africa's population has to be either in learning institutions or just entering the the labor market this is where the bulk of Africa lies this is where the future of Africa is the future of Africa is right where its children are and anything else like AI and ourselves can only be wise by investing well in the future which is the the youth it's a remarkable energy if we invest wisely on them now while Africa the best part of Africa ought to be in learning institutions our sub-Saharan Africa in particular has very limited access to to education opportunities just to quickly say almost 60 percent of young people of 15 to 17 years of age are not in any form of education institution or process and access to higher education is about nine percent this is very low compared to other regions if you look lower to six to 11 year olds who are out of school it's almost one-fifth of the children this is not a good starting point from education the quality of education is a challenge and it manifests itself in the high proportion of both primary and secondary school teachers who are less qualified compared to their counterparts and there are reasons for this we cannot go in depth with the honorable minister mentioned some of the legacies of apartheid the apartheid legacy is is is in the short in the recent history but Africa has struggled with establishing good quality education for long we have acute shortages of teachers in Africa about 17 million we will need 17 million new teachers by 2030 if we are to make any progress towards the where the world is and we have rampant shortage of other traditional resources this impact on the quality is expressed in the learning outcomes globally yes we have the global learning crisis where nearly two-thirds of six hundred million school-age children are not acquiring basic competencies but for Africa sub-saharan Africa it is uh accounts for 32.7 almost 33 percent of these kids who are not making the basic minimum competencies of just basic reading and numeracy before we get into digital literacy and all those things that we should be on so that's the picture in education now looking at the participation of African youth in the labor market at a quick glance it looks as if sub-saharan Africa is not doing too far compared to world average because the 2019 youth labor force participation rate in sub-saharan Africa is about 48 percent and this is uh that is not too far from the world average is about 53 percent however if you go below the surface these young people are in poor quality work so they are doing poor quality work and the poor environment with very little uh enumeration especially for African young women so there's a gender dimension there employment is predominantly in the informal sector in the informal economy and the employment itself is informal consequently even though it looks like we have a 48 percent participation excuse me about 13 percent of these employed young Africans live in extreme poverty they they are called workers who are they are in working poverty and then an additional 17 percent is in moderate poverty so we actually have African young people which means they are in the lower ranks of the skills and we know projections are all that the the higher risk of losing job and work are those people who are in the lower ranks of the skills semi-skills to the middle-level skills particularly middle-level skills because they are their tasks can be quickly automated so now if we have this challenge the Honorable Minister spoke of policies it means as she spoke about AI policies they have to be integrated with economic growth policies to create jobs for higher level skill but because higher level skills create jobs for middle and lower level skills it has to be integrated with education policies that emphasizes quality relevance and resource efficiency and equity so what is it that AI can do to take us towards a more desirable trouble which I'm going to be very fast before camera tells me so if I speak very fast please excuse me I think AI can enable us to open the global virtual classrooms this is happening in higher education through MOOCs there shouldn't be any reason why it cannot happen in lower levels of education and in order to open access and this is desperately needed but as the Honorable Minister mentioned COVID-19 gave us a good wake-up call a rude awakening Africa has a compounded challenge of reducing access because of language barriers is the one continent where learners of all ages are taught and they engage in their learning experience through foreign languages and so they have the double hurdle of dealing with the language and then with the concepts that they are being taught and with AI can break some of these areas they have simple things like plug-in translators that can help learners to learn in their languages slowly and slowly we have many too many of them but we can standardize orthographies across groups of languages if we are serious about alleviating the burden and AI could play a huge role AI can also help to be to make our access to education more inclusive by opening to the otherly abled persons like the visually impaired through audio facilities for the physically impaired because we can then take education to them rather than ask them to come to it and also for those with audio and auditory impairments because then we can provide subtext and so the first challenge that Africa has is access and AI has multiple roles the second challenge is moving curricula towards relevance a lot of curricula in African countries look like curricula from any other place they are very generic they are devoid of context and they're not well grounded and AI can help us translate curricula into lifelong learning systems themselves before we can count on them to support lifelong learners but to do so means to create curricula that are flexible enough that are futuristic enough now if we talk about futuristic enough we have we can tap on AI to collect data the oxygen of our days the minister calls it and to support us with big data analytics to serve as observatories for trends in future competences that are needed in life and at work but also to enable us to update curricula real time rather than be implementing obsolete curricula and AI can do that which is very difficult to do now as we use paper and pen type of curricula document we need to mainstream AI and other technologies emerging technologies into our curricula not just learning yes yes so i'll just give you two minutes to wrap up so that we can get onto the panel discussion i actually put my timer on so i am i put myself on 15 minutes so i'm i'm very careful about that don't worry when my timer goes my 15 minutes will be over um so we need to mainstream not just the learning area but as a way of educating and a way of learning and to make curricula reforms more affordable now when it comes to effective learning AI has a lot of potential to help learners engage in self-directed learning and to enable them into self-benefiting agencies it also has the potential to help us mainstream what are otherwise very difficult competences beyond the traditional disciplines like collaboration teamwork negotiation uh interacting with the world interacting with others multiculturalism we can actually not only mainstream these through through AI but we can observe the learning process and changes through AI as they happen and allow for the ability to monitor these so-called 21st century competences AI can help us differentiate learning and customize learning and it can also help us sustain learning in and outside the classroom equally AI can address shortages of teachers by pooling the few master teachers that we have so they can teach the world instead of just the kids in front of them but as the teachers do that the master teachers do that with the notice teachers in class we kill two birds with one stone because we are exposing learners to high quality learning and teaching but we are also giving teachers on the job training that is very concrete and easily and readily available and we can buy through AI we can buy teachers time efficiency one thing that teachers are a resource that teachers are poor in this time and a lot of that the time is taken by administrative tasks that can be quickly routed even lower level teaching tasks like assessing lower level skills that need to be automated like automaticity in reading automaticity in literacy this can be achieved by it's fine I come up easily we can boost also the rigor of continuous assessment particularly in a competence-based environment where we emphasize the developmental progression and if we have carefully designed rubrics AI can help us do continuous assessment instead of depending too heavily on what do we call it national exams that you have to wait years before you know that kids were not learning and AI can help us close the assessment feedback and responsive pedagogical loop which things are very difficult for teachers to do in the classroom now quickly on youth AI can help us provide youth updates on competence trends as I said they can locate the demand in the global labor market where are the demands for these competences so our youth can know that they work for the world and not for just Africa the AI can provide a virtual marketplace to match demand to supply and AI can provide real-time opportunities for continuously skilling and upskilling now do we have the capability in terms of AI the honorable ministers touched on this but I think I can leave that to discussion yes that would be I mean Dr. Naraphae that's absolutely fantastic session and I think a couple of the things that we've gotten out of that is you know how AI can allow us create customized education and also how we can use artificial intelligence as well to be able to create a decentralized federated learning process which obviously means that we can get the best of the best to teach everybody while everybody else learned in that same ecosystem layering artificial intelligence on top of it to allow us now provide a systematic process of learning that develops the minds of the young people in Africa we really really appreciate you Dr. Naraphae for the insight you've given us and also how you end the UNESCO organization to thinking about AI as a future for Africa now we're going to go into the panel discussion which is a fun exciting panel of experts that we have lined up for this session so for those of you who just coming on board I'll introduce myself very quickly and introduce the rest of the panel my name is John Kamara I'm the director for the machine intelligence institute of Africa in Cape Town I'm also the founder of AFIA Record here in Nairobi which is an AI driven health tech platform where we are as we're saying solving health tech issues COVID-19 issues using our AI as part of the solution within this ecosystem and we'll be talking a bit more about that I'd like to then introduce the rest of the panelists Alex Sado who you met earlier on will give them one minute each to introduce themselves Alex would you introduce yourself for a minute all right I was just setting this back up yes I think you've already heard a lot of me a moment ago but yes Alexander Sado so co-founder and board chair of Alliance for AI and you must be quite familiar with us now as as we are really set up to help accelerate anyone who's interested in the fourth industrial revolution will help accelerate them from the points where they have almost no knowledge of what's going on with programs that go all the way up to to being an elite global player because that's what we think is really you can really differentiate folks from Africa thank you John thank you we're also going to bring in one of my really favorite people lately that I've been talking to a lot Selena Lee who is creating a huge community for artificial intelligence and data science in Africa Selena hi it's great to be here my name is Selena Lee I'm dialing in from Cape Town South Africa and I'm the CEO of Zindi Zindi is a data science competition platform focused on the African market we host the community of 15,000 data scientists across Africa solving some of the world's most pressing business and social challenges using AI and data science thank you Selena our next panelist is somebody I've got into know quite well the past few days we've had a few chat late night in California and early morning here Brian Talebe Brian please introduce yourself hey how's everybody doing it's fantastic to be here thank you for having me I'm the CEO of Her AI we invented technology that enables people to learn three to five times faster than traditional education by using artificial intelligence and by collecting over 10,000 data points every second so in addition to selling our technology to corporations here in the United States and around the world for every license that we sell we give away a free license to members of underserved communities globally especially with a gender lens and we have a heavy focus on Africa thank you and finally we want to introduce Toyosia Karelio Buggisi who is joining us from Nigeria and we're waiting for her to join us but we will start the panel because of time and when she joins us we'll continue so this this panel as you can see we've chosen quite an interesting panel because one of the key topics for this year is education learning and accessibility for AI and obviously this is AI for good and there's a lot of you know social AI solutions and discussions so I want to start with Selena Selena one of the things I want to talk to you about ask you is about social good in AI and how is that um what we call a commissioned viable operation that allows you to scale businesses but at the same time provide the social infrastructures that we need to help the continent with you know building the community of data science and AI experts sure um so when we created Zindi we created Zindi with the recognition that there were organizations and companies across Africa that were generating more and more data and so we were living in a world of data abundance but at the same time organizations didn't necessarily have the skills to extract the full value of that data through technologies like AI and machine learning and at the same time we realized that there was this growing community this school of young talent up-and-coming data science talent in Africa that was really going under the radar in terms of you know these organizations knowing about them so I think in terms of social impact just just putting the pieces of the puzzle together just creating a space where the organizations and companies that need these data science solutions and talent and at the same time creating a space for African data scientists to showcase what they're capable of to continue to hone their skills on real-life problems and real-life data sets it's kind of a win-win so you know we're adding business value but at the same time we're also creating you know new opportunities for African data scientists in terms of employability and upscaling through real-life problem solving. Thank you Celina I'm going to jump to you Alex what has been the challenges that you've seen in how we try to integrate artificial intelligence and think like basic machine learning into various ecosystems in Africa what are the challenges around education and what are the touchpoints you think government should be active about? The biggest challenge is really well education is the biggest challenge in terms of bringing any new technology into any ecosystem because that's the entry points people need to do about technology and Mars. Today it's really with the traditional education system as I come to understand it hopefully like the marupe might be able to comment on this as well it's not built to change rapidly as rapidly as technology is changing and so it needs some support either it needs to be redesigned or there needs to be an opening for new kinds of platforms to exist on top of the traditional platform for example you have many AI communities across the entire continent of Africa that are coming up with programs and initiatives to teach people about this new technology right and AI is not the last one in the next few years there will be something new it continues to change and so we need to set up the platforms to recognize these new systems are common on top of the traditional systems to support them. Some examples are Data Science Nigeria platform and AI Kenya if I start here I would list about 80 of them that exist on the continent our organization Alliance for AI as I mentioned before got created this distributed crowd-healing program in the form of AI clubs that we want to distribute not just to schools but even religious centers like churches and mosques and other parts that will help people to learn but we then call on the government to figure out a way to to help recognize people who come with capabilities and not just folks who have degrees. I'm sure Brian will talk about this as well later on with his AI you know incredible AI platform it is truly cutting edge as the top companies in the world leveraging what Brian is building. Pause. Thank you Brian I'm gonna ask you a different spin of a question that we're getting from the audience one of the all you know they're asking you sit in the US and obviously you were doing amazing stuff with it how easy is it for a company here in Africa to be able to apply machine learning one because of the lack of education and two because of the cost of artificial intelligence and how could they actually find this funding and a lot of our audience want to know from you what is your take on this and how do they you know proactively go around this situation. Sure that's a fantastic question and Alex thank you very much for the kind words as well so one of the interesting things about artificial intelligence right now is that most of the algorithms that most AI companies use have been around for 30 40 years the biggest difference the biggest differentiator for artificial intelligence companies now whether they're here in the United States or in Africa is the quantity and the quality of the data that you collect now the cost of running artificial intelligence in your company for all of the people that are watching has plummeted because there are a lot of off-the-shelf tools that you can buy from these large organizations that enable you to implement artificial intelligence into your existing platforms or into the companies that you have the key is what is the data that you're collecting how do you model your how do you build those models in a way that the data is structured and clean and provides value ultimately for the the solution that you're trying to generate thank you um Salina I'm gonna go back to you again from a question from our audience how do you think what are the chances of survival for startups in the African ecosystem in the AI space and we really want you to be honest here because people really want to know that you are right in the in the center of it sure I mean speaking from the point of view of a startup working in the AI space in Africa I think um let's see I mean I feel I feel optimistic and part of the reason why I feel optimistic is because like I said we reached 15,000 users on Zindi in about a year and a half and every week we have hundreds of new data scientists that are joining the platform and so the reason why I feel optimistic is because I feel like there is this movement that's happening in Africa across Africa from South Africa to Zimbabwe to Ghana to Tunisia there's a movement that's happening and so I think that while there's still a lot of challenges for startups in Africa any startup in Africa there's challenges in terms of you know raising enough capital and the market opportunities but at the same time if there's a space for a startup to succeed I think that AI being on the cutting edge um is well positioned and on top of it you have this driving force which is the youth in Africa which are upscaling quickly in this space and that will drive the innovations in this space okay so Alex I mean if you allow me to add to that a little bit the um piece I also see is the is the information arbitrage right startups around the entire world it's just it's hard for them to survive but then across the world many programs have been put together to provide support and guidance for this startup provide free cloud credits provide technical support provide marketing support these programs are six around the world but those programs are somehow not aware that African startups are doing AI and so they're not advertising to Africa and so there needs to be someone connecting that at Alliance for AI we do the best we can we make posts on Twitter every time we find out because we are in San Francisco and we're connected to all of this so we see it and we know the opportunities um but perhaps there's someone larger than us that can play this role as well and help plug this gap because you have the the accelerators from Amazon from NVIDIA from Google from Alibaba they're helping tens of thousands of startups across the world but their portfolio of African startups is very slim okay so if we take the conversation from them Brian do you think that there is a need for collaborative partnership within the startup ecosystem in Africa first and then do you think that AI itself is too much of a mystical value that most startups don't really need and how do you think Africa can leverage the opportunity that has been presented at the minute yeah that's a fantastic question look collaboration is the key to success for any tech company part of the reason that San Francisco has done so well over the years and become the preeminent tech hub in the world is because of the level of collaboration where people don't see each other as necessarily competitors they see each other as people that they're going to collaborate with over the next 10 20 30 40 years not hey this is just one transaction or a hive to beat this person at this other thing it's all about how do we bring our our talents together how do we enable multiple companies to all be successful and so I love what the full few guys are doing as far as bringing technology companies in Africa together to collaborate to enable them to be successful and it's critical that they collaborate with the United States as well what was the second part of the question that you asked we're talking about in terms of the mystifying AI is it necessary and important that every company in Africa actually has to be AI driven absolutely I would say it's necessary for every company around the world to be AI driven at this point look artificial intelligence right now is where the internet was back in the 90s where corporations were just beginning to realize that they need to have a website they need to have an internet presence and the ones that did were able to perform radically better than companies that did not to the point where the short period later if you didn't have a website you essentially didn't exist as a company artificial intelligence is the same thing it's not some super complex idea it's something that will impact every single industry every single company around the world and the folks that ignore it are going to go the same way as blockbuster and other companies so it's really critical that every company has an AI strategy and AI plan and understands how to leverage data and artificial intelligence to ultimately provide more value for their consumers and for their environments so we're saying why 2k might happen to the companies who don't necessarily embrace AI but those of you who are younger now um one last question before we go back to the audience again what whether you see the role of the government in the push for artificial intelligence in Africa and specifically on health how do you think AI can help us achieve some of the milestones we need to achieve during this COVID period a lot of people want to know that I mean I think um on the side of health uh yeah I recently had a really interesting conversation where with someone about about the role of AI in Africa in health care and I think that you know it's it's really about extending the limited resources that there are for health care extending the reach extending the or increasing the efficiency of getting services out to more remote less um less accessible spaces like less accessible people um and so AI is maybe not even necessarily going to be as revolutionary as like you know a robot doctor but it can be as simple as um you know diagnostics becoming more accessible and efficiently be mobile based diagnostics um you know so that so that health extension health workers can can escalate cases as they need to be um so I think that AI will play a critical role um in health care in Africa for sure and in terms of the role of government I'm not exactly I think Alex probably has more more experience in terms of the role of government in AI but I think that you know we're seeing some barriers or potential barriers versus um benefits in terms of data security and data privacy um policies you know especially for Cindy we work so across different markets um in South Africa you have poppy and other countries you have more stringent or less stringent um data you know policies and so I think that you know that's that's something that the governments will be looking at more carefully and that can either hinder or accelerate um the use of AI in the market um Taylor see just joined us um Alex I'm going to go to her real quick Taylor see can you hear me hi John I can hear you how you doing today good good good um one very important question and it's a quite a simple question from my audience is do you think that governments actually understand artificial intelligence one and do you think they use it as a boss word two and do you think actually we need to train governments in Africa to actually understand what artificial intelligence is so Taylor see over to you uh thanks very thanks very much John I I think my answer to that question will be very direct and I'll speak from the Nigerian perspective um in the last couple of months our Honorable Minister for Communications and the Nigerian IT Development Agency have been working around you know powering artificial intelligence and doing some work at the intersection of the public and the private sectors to ensure that we use you know AI to drive collaborative effort around solving problems specifically in the area of information dissemination education policymaking and things like that but one of the things that is very crucial for us to pay attention to is um that as of today African governments don't quite understand the um the multi-layered challenges that you know the continent does have and the power that technology we haven't quite mapped out what our technology priorities should be as individual nations and as a continent so for example yesterday you may have seen it in the news that the Association of the Union of Universities of Nigeria uh said that e-learning is impossible in the country and that is the academic union of universities of the which is like the union of our university lecturers um in a world where we've been on your partial or full lockdowns for the last couple of months you would have thought that people should be seeking and trying to figure out what the potential solutions will be as to how we can you know enhance learning and advance you know the education of our children but you have the the lecturers themselves saying that e-learning is unable to work and when you don't think about the policy frameworks in all four I think we lost touristy and obviously the universities are not working in Nigeria so the internet is down So where are we with basic technology in our education to make it all of the information that's happening play again no no go ahead we're listening to you yes we can hear you okay so I was saying basic technology forms the the very first level foundation upon which you can now begin to build more advanced technologies like artificial intelligence data science and other computational technologies and you'd find that I'd say that our governments do not understand the full scope of the power that technology does wield over our development as a continent and I mean to your question about whether we need to train governments the first thing that we need to do is to perhaps begin a reorientation process on the mindsets of the people on the government side because all of the innovation that's currently happening within countries I mean I've taken Nigeria my country for example you'd see that the systems that are powering technology innovation and growth and come all of that innovation are coming from the side of the private sector and it's and all of this technology are even concentrated in certain cities around the country it's not even permeated all of the different states of the country yet so do we need to try government before we even begin to train the government it's even important for you to let you to take remove the politics that you know has held us down as a country and as a continent in such a way that our government officials don't resist technology because they think you would take their jobs away they have absolutely for example for us at Rise Networks where the first learning research and working in this lab in the country and one of the basic most one of the greatest challenges we face even in you know speaking to companies about training their staff speaking to government about reskilling and upskilling people you know public servants on the government side is that a lot of people are afraid that they hear artificial intelligence will take away their jobs and so they're resisting it with all their power and their money but what we're telling you is artificial intelligence is simply non-biological non-biological intelligence it's only it's even going to create more jobs it will make our systems more efficient and whether the government I'm going to I'm going to go to the next question there's really not much that the government of Africa can do about it can do I we agree with you because of time I'm going to ask one last question to you Alex and you'll be very quick about it two minutes and do you think that African investors understand artificial intelligence in terms of investing in our local startups here and do you think the likes of the ITU the UN funding organizations can do a bit more in terms of investing in AI driven companies this is a question by a lot of the people in the audience so make it quick and fast yeah African fast is 100 percent 100 percent that there should be more funding coming into this that was the entire if I was to confess the entire reason for this entire session was to create that awareness that there's AI happening in Africa and foundations and KPP bodies should start to look into it and invest in it because this innovation coming out of Africa is very important and crucial and important to meet the United States development goes by 2030 these innovations are are accessible affordable and reusable across the entire world better if you allow me to say than innovations coming from San Francisco which tend to be a lot more expensive as they don't have the necessary context and so then just with 30 seconds to the government piece governments around I've had the privilege or honor to interact with governments across the entire world when you talk about deploying supercomputers to them and I can say governments across the world don't understand AI not just in Africa but the way they fixed it was to create avenues for the private sector to influence the government and inform them and with Africa we must tap into the diaspora you have Africans at the top of the top companies they know what it is they have to be we must tap into the diaspora yes on that note I'm going to have me my closing remark before we hand back it's been a nice really enjoyable session thank you Selena thank you Brian thank you Alex minister Dr. Maraphay also everybody who has been part of this panel my passion shows to you is very simple I believe that Africa is a continent with numerous amounts of talents the talents we don't have shortage of talent but we have shortage of decision makers and leaders who will allow us to enter that fourth industrial revolution so that it doesn't become a buzzword that we consistently throw around and it's also important that we have the right people who actually govern these institutions and who govern the process of the next level of information that we use to generate value in our continent where we are right at the cost of history and if you look at history across multiple generations there's always a time in life when there's a shift and a dynamic shift in change COVID-19 climatic conditions all these things are part of those signs that are telling us there is going to be a new economic power and there is no reason why Africa cannot be that economic power so our governments private sector our VCs our investors have to rethink how they invest how they provide solutions how they provide opportunities and also how they look inward to allow our own start of our own private continent and most importantly we must trust ourselves enough to make mistakes that allow us to learn very quickly and become the proponents of our own history there is no reason why we can't have AI competition in Africa building AI solutions that can sell in America there's no reason why we can't do the same in Europe and anywhere else and the diaspora that we have becomes a massive opportunity for us to team NIPFROG this technology and use it to drive the value of our young generation where we own the youth infrastructure in the well so I'm really excited to be part of this change I think there's a lot of things happening I think governments should look inward during this COVID period it presents up an opportunity to look at all the startups in your country that are actually doing amazing things focus on those startups try to help them invest in them take a chance because the UN ITU can only provide these several opportunities but we need to embrace it ourselves thank you very much my name is John Kamara from Mafia Record uh Alex Ido Brian Telavi Selena and the ITU Kesna back to you thank you very much John and especially for the amazing time management it was great and big thanks to our distinguished speakers and the audience for such an interactive discussion we would like to also thank our partners and sponsors for their continuous support next week we have three AI for good sessions the AI for gender inequality breakthrough track to be held on 23rd June the launch of the global dialogue on eSports to be held on Wednesday 24th June and the AI for good innovation factory life pitching session to be held on Friday 26 June for more information please visit our website aiforgood.itu.int or follow us on social media we will also post all the information in our chat so thank you very much and see you next week