South Africa on path to boost its Al capability

South Africa needs to accelerate digital transformation and infrastructure to harness the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) and meet its goal of ensuring 100% connectivity in the country by 2029.

- Aarti Bhana

Although the country has made inroads with developing policies for the adoption of AI, including the National Policy on Data and Cloud, the National AI Policy Framework and the establishment of the AI Institute of South Africa, which laid strong groundwork, the uptake of the smart technology has been slow.

"In order to sustain positive momentum and unlock the full potential of AI, South Africa must address three key challenges: AI infrastructure, industry application and talent and local ecosystem development," Gene Zhang, the chief executive of Huawei South Africa Enterprise Business, said at a recent business conference.

He said in terms of infrastructure, the three main challenges are data, computing power and connectivity.