We're at such an exciting moment in Artificial Intelligence (AI), with technical breakthroughs coming every few months or even weeks.
This rapid progress in AI’s development represents an extraordinary opportunity for Africa; turning that opportunity into reality will require all of us to take action.
As the Global AI Summit on Africa convenes, now is the time to take stock of what is at stake and what we can do to capitalise on this moment. Let me begin by highlighting four areas where I see significant potential for AI to benefit everyone:
First, assisting people. AI will increasingly assist, complement, empower, and inspire people. Take for example, Google Translate, which helps people connect, access knowledge and information, and unlock opportunities.
When Google first launched Translate in 2006, it offered only a few languages. Since then, advances in AI have enabled the expansion to almost 250 languages - 110 of these added in just the last year alone, including African languages that hadn’t been there before like Fon, Kikongo, Luo, Ga, Swati, Venda and Wolof. And Google is working to expand that number to 1,000.
Second, transforming sectors and powering economic growth. AI offers the potential to transform sectors that matter, from healthcare to education and agriculture.
For the public sector, that could take the form of personalised and more efficient government services for everyone, in agriculture, improved crop yields, water use and food security.
Inside sectors, AI also can power the innovation and growth of entrepreneurs as well as small and large businesses, enabling economy-wide productivity gains and economic growth.
To give a sense of the scale of this economic opportunity, GSMA recently shared estimates that suggest that AI could add up to $2.9 trillion to Africa’s economy by 2030.
As the continent with the world's youngest and fastest-growing workforce, capitalising on this opportunity is essential for future prosperity.
Third, advancing scientific progress. One example is AlphaFold, our Nobel Prize winning AI system that enabled the prediction of the structures of all 200 million proteins known to science.
Knowledge of protein structures is critical for understanding diseases, developing drugs, treatments, therapies and more. To date, over 2.5 million researchers in over 190 countries are freely using AlphaFold – more than 25K of them right here in Africa.
AlphaFold is just one example of how AI is enabling progress in multiple scientific disciplines that are critical to humanity today, and in the future.
Fourth, helping to address societal challenges. Disaster response is an instructive example of what’s possible. With natural disasters like floods, we know that advance warnings can save lives.
Another area where we’re seeing significant progress is healthcare, where AI models are used for effective diagnosis of diseases affecting millions, from maternal health concerns to diabetic retinopathy.
Some of that work has been done right here on the African continent, including recent research on tuberculosis diagnosis in collaboration with the Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Zambia.
AI is also making data more accessible and useful to policymakers seeking to address societal challenges with initiatives like Data Commons.
So how does Africa capitalise on the opportunities? We must take action in five key areas, detailed in Google’s ‘AI Sprinters’ Policy Blueprint for Africa. In all five, African-led innovation will be critical.
First, investment in foundational infrastructure – this means broadband infrastructure and compute capacity through cloud data centres, and other infrastructure.
Second, is talent development. Equipping Africans with AI skills through training and STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) education is critical.
Third, expansion of African research and development capacity. We need African researchers and developers working on solutions to continental and global challenges – like Google’s AI teams in Ghana and Kenya.
Fourth, creation and scaling of vibrant AI ecosystems. For entrepreneurs to thrive they need ecosystems of research universities, startups, established companies, venture capital, and access to continental-scale markets and opportunities. Africa needs not just one or two of these ecosystems but dozens, all across the continent.
Fifth, cross-continent and global partnerships. Collaboration is vital for accelerating and scaling all the above. Again African-led innovation will be essential to making this happen.
And in all of these areas, there is work for governments and policy-makers to enable the actions needed, at a local, regional, and continental scale.
The writer is SVP for Research, Labs, Technology & Society at Google.
