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Artificial intelligence will take center stage in Rwanda this week as more than 1,000 policy makers, business leaders and interest groups gathered for the first ever global AI summit on Africa.
The two-day event begins in Kigali on Thursday, with Paul Kagame planning to speak, following an ambitious plan to mainstream AI applications in Africa. Last week, Cassava Technologies, a group owned by Zimbabwean billionaire and Summit co-chair Masiyiwa, announced plans to build an AI factory in South Africa by June, using chips from US maker Nvidia. In December, Chinese telecom giant Huawei launched a cloud service powered by multiple advanced data centers in Nigeria.
Supporting this private sector is a wave of African governments that develop policies for long-term investments in courts, especially in cloud and fiber networks, and develop local talent. Nigeria and South Africa are the two largest economies on the continent, with AI policy frameworks floating over the past 12 months. Rwanda announced its guidance documents in 2022.
For years, Rwanda has positioned itself as an attractive hub for African startups and global companies built. Its technology and venture capital revenue lags behind Nigeria and South African leaders as well as neighbors Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. However, the unanimous push by the Kagame government is diplomatic concerns about its role in regional tensions, especially the Congo Doctor, which makes Rwanda the main town square for African AI review.
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The demand for AI in Africa can be seen in the rise of automated customer service efforts by bank chatbots, and poverty interventions can also be more efficiently performed using algorithms. The potentially huge financial returns of the technology are another driving force. But there is also a lot of curiosity about the ethics of how to deploy AI to a billion people.
A growing number of research groups are investigating the potential of the technology to change work and life in Africa, as well as the role of government policies in realizing their potential. A Google report last year predicts that AI could add $30 billion to the economy in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030. Separate estimates are expected to increase Africa’s annual GDP by 3% to $2.9 trillion in the same year.
Chinasa T. Okolo, a researcher at the Brookings Center for Technology Innovation, told Semafor that cabinet officials from around 20 African countries in Rwanda should make tangible results and commitments to strengthening Africa’s AI ecosystem. She expects a “continental declaration within a certain range” from the summit, and a “major financial commitment” from investors to support AI research and development and development on the African continent.
Alexander’s opinion
When Google opened its first AI lab in Ghana in 2019, the technology dialogue in Africa was dominated by the emergence of startups that could undermine specific aspects of the local economy. However, in the years since the successful breakthroughs of cloud computing and OpenAI, rapid advances in cloud computing have intensified the urgency of considering the potential scanning effects of AI across the region.
Last June, a group of 130 African science and technology ministers recognized the continent’s AI strategy, highlighting this critical moment. They praised the “huge opportunities” brought by AI, but also urged to build a system that reflects Africa’s “diversity, language, culture, history and geographical environment.”
African AI innovators have been pushing for this effort. A few years ago, I wrote two researchers who made a translation model to benefit the Pidgin English speakers in Nigeria. A large local language model released by South African company Lelapa AI last year is making justifications for African representatives. This year, a project by French telecom group Orange will see Openai and Meta collaborate to fine-tune existing models Whisper and Llama to translate African languages.
As for the opportunity, the $680 million acquisition of Tunisian-born AI Intadeep by German vaccine maker Biontech remains a reference for what African-born companies can achieve under the appropriate conditions. Successful production companies and exports should be on the Rwanda agenda.
Space for divergence
According to the IMF index, sub-Saharan Africa is the least prepared to develop AI systems due to the low levels of digital infrastructure, economic integration, labor policy and ethical frameworks. South Sudan, the Central African Republic and Chad have the lowest scores in the global digital infrastructure indicators.
Views of Abuja
Kashifu Inuwa Abdullahi, head of Nigerian technology agency NITDA, said Nigeria wants to attract large tech companies with a lot of financial resources to build the country’s mega data center.
“We are attracting Google and local providers to invest in infrastructure, while the government wants to focus on applications,” Abdullahi told Semafor. “DeepSeek proves to the world that you don’t need large infrastructure like Openai. We can use smaller infrastructure, be innovative and get similar quality.”
Notable
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Nigeria launches Google-backed AI investment fund last year However, it is completely abandoned because it is too little to use.
