Governments on the African continent should be investing in artificial intelligence, according to Ingabire. — Pixabay
A dearth of African-language content is delaying the uptake of artificial intelligence on the continent, compounding a lack of access to the technology, according to mobile industry body GSMA.
The biggest challenge in growing the sector has been the usage gap – about 790 million people on the continent live in areas with Internet coverage but don’t have the smartphones to get online, according to Vivek Badrinath, director general at the GSMA.
"There are 2,000 languages in Africa and those languages are not represented in the AI models,” he said on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, on Wednesday. "You need to bring the unconnected onto the Internet, and you need to bring content to them in their languages.”
GSMA is working with operators to produce affordable smartphones optimised for Africa with the right screen size, memory and software features that allow for proper use, and batteries with sufficient life for people without easy access to electricity, he said.
"It’s not about providing cheap phones that are underperforming, they need to be relevant enough for people to be comfortable getting on the mobile Internet,” Badrinath said.
Governments on the continent should be investing in artificial intelligence, according to Rwandan Information and Communication Minister Paula Ingabire. Her nation is targeting a contribution of 5% of gross domestic product from the industry within five years.
"The recognition today is that AI is an investment that we should have done yesterday and we should be focusing on it today,” she said at the congress.
The East African nation that’s been positioning itself as a digital hub on the continent expects to sign several deals for data centres, she said, without elaborating. Earlier this year, it received US$7.5mil (RM31.68mil) for an AI-scaling hub from the Gates Foundation.
Two years ago, 12% of foreign private flows to Rwanda went into the technology sector. That has now grown to 18%, Ingabire said. – Bloomberg
