Study: How AI can meet urban challenges; Egypt, Morocco consider AI laws
Africa AI News weekly digest...
Good morning, Happy New Year, and welcome to Africa AI News – Weekly News Digest.
We hope you, dear reader, had some time off and a chance to recharge before this new year. Because it’s going to be a big one. The AI industry is starting to see some challenges as the hype machine overheats, leading to AI fatigue amongst potential customers of the tech, and increasingly negative coverage.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman says they’ve definitely, totally worked out a way to maybe build Artificial General Intelligence and will launch “superintelligence” any day now, and then days later admitted that they’re losing money on their only major paid for product. Just this morning Elon Musk was quoted saying all human-generated training data is “exhausted”.
So these next few months are critical — AI solution developers must start talking about true wins. Real applications, delivering real value, to real people, really. Evidence-based case studies!
Money is still being poured into AI development, but we need to cool down the hype machine with a cold, fresh dose of reality to keep it coming. Africa AI News wants your success stories. Successful applications, new techniques, how to get access to critical resources. Any to share?
Simply reply to this email, and we’ll get it.
On with this week’s issue!
/Roger
Smart Cities
Cisco: AI to help meet critical urban challenges
#Africa #smartcities - AI's transformative potential will allow African nations to address critical urban challenges according to a new whitepaper from Cisco and Carnegie Mellon University Africa. Despite the continent's infrastructure gaps, resources and service delivery, AI can help bridge the digital divide by optimising operations, service delivery and resource usage. (Editor’s note: This paper is actually really interesting, comprehensively footnoted. Read the whitepaper, PDF)
Education
Egypt invests $200 million in digital universities
#Egypt #education - Egypt’s Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research has allocated EGP 10 billion ($200m) to upgrade public universities’ digital infrastructure, including a Generative AI integration pilot at Ain Shams University. (Daily News Egypt)
CogLabs robotics and ML kids education programme expanded in Nigeria
#education #Nigeria — CogLabs, a Google-UNESCO collaboration to teach kids robotics and machine learning skills has been expanded in Nigeria, with a new lab in Abuja. The focus is on low cost, open tech that does not require a laptop to work with it. (Google Blog)
Konecta to invest $100 million in Egyptian CoE
#Egypt #CoE — Spanish BPO operator Konecta has committed $100 million over three years to its new Cairo-based regional headquarters and centre of excellence, intended to drive Conversational AI and data analytics capabilities. This was an MoU signed with Egypt’s Information Technology Industry Development Agency (ITIDA). (Amwal al Ghad)
Egypt’s Talent Academy trains 15,000 in AI fields
#Egypt #training - The National Telecommunication Institute, in partnership with Huawei, completed its first AI training program under the Egyptian Talent Academy, aiming to train 15,000 youth in advanced technologies, including 5G and cloud computing, over five years. (TechAfrica News)
Huawei advances Morocco’s DigiSchool project
#Morocco #edtech - Huawei completed the DigiSchool 2024 project, part of Morocco’s education reform roadmap. The initiative aims to prepare students for a connected world, fostering digital inclusion. (TechAfrica News)
Culture
South African Cultural Observatory reports creatives diving into AI
#SouthAfrica #culture - SACO, a research group funded by the Department of Sports, Art and Culture found that 70% of the creatives it surveyed (note: convenience sampling, not random) are already using AI to improve creative output, especially in fields like animation. 90% worry about needing better policy and regulation, and 90% worry about IP theft. (SACO blog)
Funding
PBR Life Sciences raises $1-m to expand healthcare analytics in Nigeria
#Nigeria #funding — Growing from a data aggregator for Nigerian healthcare and life sciences, London and Lagos-based PBR pivoted towards analytics and AI in 2021, building a massive curated database for market insights. The new funds are intended for tech dev, and to expand into Ghana and Kenya. (Africa Business Communities)
Conferences
InnovateAI Lagos returns for a second go in Feb 2025
#Nigeria #conferences — After a solid debut last year, this event is back on Feb 21st 2025. Focusing on AI in the workforce, it will feature a number of top HR leaders to discuss this contentious topic. (The Nation)
Microsoft AI Tour heads for Lagos in Feb 2025
#Nigeria #conferences — Intended to connect business leaders and technologists with the latest technology, Microsoft’s AI Tour is a free, one day event that is touring the world. (Microsoft)
Applications
AI plus IOT equals better air in Jo’burg
#SouthAfrica #environment — A technology developed by the SA Atmospheric Quality Monitoring team (SACAQM) to improve analysis of air quality, called AI_R (geddit?) is to be expanded during 2025 with 120 more sensors adding to the 30 device pilot. They will feed modelling systems, to predict air quality behaviour and pollution sources. (IDRC blog)
AI boosts Moroccan bank performance by 30%
#Morocco #applications — AI adoption has cut operational processing times by 30% across Morocco’s top three banks and increased customer satisfaction by 20%, according to a study by Mohammed V University in Rabat. (Morocco World News)
Law firm faces sanction for AI hallucinated citations
#SouthAfrica #law #mis-applications — South African law firm Surendra Singh and Associates has been given a thrashing by a judge, ordered to pay costs and possibly faces sanction when an over-booked attorney had a clerk prepare papers … using Web searches and an AI, which created citations from thin air. (TechCentral/GroundUp)
Competitions
Zindi’s AI for Equity Challenge is open for Round 2
#Africa #challenges — The first round saw two winners in data science competition/collab platform, Zindi’s, AI dev challenge. Sokoine University of Agriculture, Tanzania, for a waterborne disease tool, and Kuyesera AI Lab, Malawi, for a flooding prediction tool. These two projects become the problem statement for Round 2 competitors to chase, for $12,500 cash prizes and $25k in AWS credits. (Zindi)
Marketing
AI First newsletter from Carrington Malin debuts for marketers
#AIFirst #marketing — The first issue of AI First, a new monthly newsletter for executives and marketing professionals is out, published by Carringon Malin, founder of Middle East AI News. It focuses on AI’s role in transforming marketing and consumer behaviour. (LinkedIn)
Regulation
Morocco parliament reviewing draft AI law
#Morocco #AIlaw - Moroccan House of Representatives is reviewing a draft law to regulating AI, reflecting ongoing debates on the balance between its benefits and potential risks. The draft 17 article law seeks to establish a legal framework to manage AI applications and ensure their ethical and safe use. (Hespress)
Egypt plans AI and data regulation laws
#Egypt-#AIlaw - Egypt's Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) is drafting laws to regulate AI, data exchange, and classification. This was announced during a meeting with The World Bank's vice president for Digital Transformation. (Ahram Online)
[ This newsletter was human edited and AI bedazzled ]