AI in Africa: Addressing Key Concerns and Policy Perspectives Shaping the Continent’s Future

Table of Contents

• Existing Policy Frameworks Shaping AI In African Nations
• Opportunities and Difficulties Associated With AI Adoption in Africa
• Difficulties Associated With AI Adoption in Africa
• Strategies to Ensure Ethical AI Development
• Final Thoughts
• References

It is known that Africa often lags behind the rest of the world in adopting new technological advances. After the AI wave hit in late 2022 and was being massively adopted by various companies globally, new policies were introduced. Along with the policies came the concerns. 

The African continent also participated in creating new policies to regulate AI-related activities. Even though it may take longer for AI in Africa to kick off, it’s necessary to examine the existing policies and the concerns of African AI enthusiasts regarding its future impact. 

Existing Policy Frameworks Shaping AI In African Nations

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Rwanda, South Africa, Mauritius, and Egypt are at the forefront of embracing the AI wave to keep up with the 4th industrial development like the rest of the world. To digress, I consider the rush to capitalize on AI a wrong move for most African populations.

A majority of African countries still rely on manual processes. The primary concern should be to build up the necessary infrastructure and industrialize various sectors that uphold the nation’s economy. In comparison, other continents are significantly ahead in technological advancement; they are in a comfortable position to incorporate AI and AGI into their various sectors.

However, believing that Artificial Intelligence (AI) can play a significant role in helping African nations achieve sustainability and boost their economies, at least five African countries have jumped on the AI train.

The main policy perspective on AI has been figuring out ways to tackle ethical data protection since AI development relies on training models acquired through data collection. It’s important to know what data is being collected and how it will be shared and used in a way that respects the human rights of African people. 

In addition to each country’s efforts, subsidiaries of the African Union also look into how emerging technologies, including AI adoption, will infringe on human rights. With all these conscious measures being implemented by each country and unions for African Heads of State seeking to be part of the AI wave, Africa isn’t being left out of the global conversation. 

Opportunities and Difficulties Associated With AI Adoption in Africa

E-commerce, a booming sector in the African economy, actively employs AI technology for buying, selling, and addressing customer complaints. This sector uses technologies like chatbots and machine learning algorithms to tailor ad recommendations to each customer’s shopping habits, creating a unique experience. Recently, GPT 3.5 and Gemini have been adopted to generate content for academia, advertising, and edutainment purposes, while Bing and Midjourney have been adopted to generate royalty-free images.

Beyond these minor applications, when you consider the challenges and opportunities of AI adoption in Africa objectively, you’ll notice even greater potential and achievements. For instance, it can cause a groundbreaking shift in agricultural practices. AI prediction models will minimize resource waste by advising farmers on optimal times for planting, harvesting, pest control, and even irrigation. 

Despite large populations, many African nations face a shortage of technically skilled workers. One area where this is very prevalent is in the healthcare sector. In regions where socioeconomic conditions drive skilled professionals abroad, trained machine learning models could be used for medical diagnostic purposes, allowing more resources to be focused on more complex aspects, like surgical procedures. Business owners and CEOs can also improve and streamline workflows by automating repetitive tasks.

Difficulties Associated With AI Adoption in Africa

The challenge of adopting AI in Africa is enormous. I hinted earlier that Africa lacks the infrastructure to adopt this technology, a point that is reinforced by many, including tech leaders. This mainly stems from the lack of ample online data storage (cloud) services for deploying trained AI models in most African countries.

Countries like Nigeria still battle with power supply, which is essential for powering the systems needed to run and implement AI models. The absence of comprehensive data required to train AI for informed predictions ranks high on the list of challenges.

A vast amount of information is still recorded using age-old inventions, and those stored online are often not preserved for extended periods. Moreover, most existing AI models are not tailored to African societies. 

Thanks to Africa’s predominantly young population, which is actively invested in catching up with the world’s technological advancements, it is possible to build AI startups solely focused on creating products for the African market.

Technical workshops should be set up to train the masses on the importance of documentation and preserving the information collected. Ensuring that private information from collected data is used in ways that don’t risk citizens’ privacy also makes adopting AI in Africa seem like a Herculean task.

Strategies to Ensure Ethical AI Development

To be fair, African leaders are well aware of the ethical concerns of using AI, and it is a subject that is extensively deliberated on, which has led to policies focused on ethical usage. A way to guarantee that human rights to privacy are not breached in AI development and deployment in Africa is to use indigenous technical human resources.

While no approach is foolproof, their loyalties are likely more aligned with their continent. I am throwing this in due to the current conversations about the ethical use of data triggered by the OpenAI lawsuit. 

In addition, within organizations leading in AI development, data access should be restricted to keep a tight leash on its usage. Such restrictions must extend to government entities, with regular audits encouraged to ensure compliance and transparency. The issue of bias can be handled by ensuring diverse data collection and adequate representation in each data sample.

Final Thoughts

As eager as African nations might be to incorporate AI technology into socioeconomic activities, the major deal breaker is that most of the continent is not ready for that transition. The good news is that opportunities for AI adoption in Africa still abound, particularly in current affairs and infrastructural development. 

AI can be used to improve patient care, cover up for the shortage of medical personnel, and improve resource allocation in the agricultural sector. However, addressing major concerns like bias, data privacy, and transparency is essential for this to be possible. AI development in Africa can do much good but also put millions at risk if policy perspectives don’t reflect this.

References

Ade-Ibijola, A. & Chinedu, O.. (2023). Artificial Intelligence in Africa: Emerging Challenges. 10.1007/978-3-031-08215-3_5. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/366776658_Artificial_Intelligence_in_Africa_Emerging_Challenges

Schwaller, F. (2023, January 1). Could AI transform health care in Africa? Deutsche Welle. https://www.dw.com/en/could-ai-transform-health-care-in-africa/a-67597556

African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights. (2023, June 8–9). PRESS RELEASE: Inception Workshop and Experts’ Consultation on the Study on human and peoples’ rights and artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and other new and emerging technologies in Africa. https://achpr.au.int/en/news/press-releases/2023-06-08/inception-workshop-and-experts-consultation-artificial-intelligence

Stahl, B.C., Leach, T., Oyeniji, O., Ogoh, G. (2023). AI Policy as a Response to AI Ethics? Addressing Ethical Issues in the Development of AI Policies in North Africa. In: Eke, D.O., Wakunuma, K., Akintoye, S. (eds) Responsible AI in Africa. Social and Cultural Studies of Robots and AI. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-08215-3_7