Thirty-three (33) year old Moustapha Cisse, lead of the Google Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Lab in Accra, Ghana is a shining example of the limitless possibilities for young people in Africa, who want to make sterling careers in technology, and create positive impacts in their society.
Cisse, who is fast emerging as a leading authority in AI, had to leave his home country of Senegal, to study in France before becoming an expert in this field. While most of the millions of young people on the continent are unlikely to have the same opportunity, this knowledge is gradually becoming available in Africa for those desirous of it.
“I had to do this (study abroad for AI) ten years ago, and we are working to change the situation. First, there are more resources available out there for people to educate themselves. Secondly, Google is collaborating with institutions to develop flagship graduate programmes that allow people to do cutting edge machine learning education on the continent (of Africa),” said Cisse in an interview during the Google Making AI event in Amsterdam earlier this month.
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He further explained, “An example is the African Masters of Machine Intelligence, developed in partnership with the African Institute of Mathematical Science. This will bring the best of AI education into Africa, to train young Africans who already have degrees in applied mathematics, computer science or engineering to start careers in this field. This is an important step even if it is not enough.”
Empowering young people with the knowledge to develop technologies based on AI, can contribute towards solving many of the problems on the continent. In applying AI, many sectors in Africa are uncharted territory.
As Cisse highlighted, the opportunity to positively impact people’s lives with machine learning and AI in general is huge in Africa. “If we can put the technology in the hands of people who have the problems and allow them to solve it by themselves, then the potential is very important and that is part of what we are working on.
“I personally believe that there is a lot of potential in agriculture, education, healthcare to apply AI and alleviate some of the current problems we have,” said Cisse.
Recent BusinessDay articles on the use of AI to combat illegal logging, flood alerts, and detecting diseases in crops, are only an infinitesimal part of the several ways the technology can help to address many of the problems on the African continent.
Cisse explained that beyond adapting usage of AI as currently deployed in other parts of the world to solve problems in Africa, ongoing work at Google is aimed at developing local solutions as well.
“What we are also looking forward to is being able to build technology that is tailored specifically for the problems that we have here, and hopefully, also exported as a contribution of Africa in AI to different parts of the world. That is why I often say that we are not just here to do AI for Africa, but AI by Africa. We should bring our own contribution to the current research and development in this field,” he said.
CALEB OJEWALE
