The hope and perils of an AI revolution

Africa lags behind as a global Al power, but is beginning to realise the technology's potential-good and bad

- Jason Burke

I n South Africa, there are drones monitoring weeds; in Mauritius, computers crunch health data; and in Nairobi, surveillance systems impose a modicum of order on the chaotic traffic. The bright new future of artificial intelligence in Africa is part of the bright new future of the continent as a whole, advocates say.

"One thing is clear: Africans have a goldmine at our fingertips. A rapidly growing population of 1.4 billion people, 70% under the age of 30, combined with huge growth in Al investments, creates a potent recipe... We will not sit back and wait for the rest of the world to reap our rewards," wrote Mahamudu Bawumia, the vice-president of Ghana and head of the government's economic management team, in the Guardian earlier this year.

AI is not new on the continent. Ghanaian cashew farmers use drones to detect disease. In Rwanda, AI schedules the delivery by drone of medicine to patients in remote areas. In Cape Town, a startup is digitising African languages to allow them to be translated by AI-powered software.

But Africa is lagging. An index by Oxford Insights, a UK-based consultancy, placed Mauritius as the most advanced sub-Saharan country but only 57th globally. South Africa followed and is the only country in the region with essential infrastructure such as 5G connectivity.