Global growth opportunity for African governments in AI, ML

By Alexander Chiejina

• AI – basis of technological improvements to meet 134 targets of SDGs

• Could open $12trn in market opportunities

• Create 380m jobs by 2030 for world’s youngest continent 

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Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have become a mainstay in the global tech space for the past five years irrespective of the industry. From manufacturing, IT, or any other industry, AI and ML are utilised in some form or the other. Little wonder companies are increasingly relying on AI and ML given the immense potential it offers to create a positive impact on business, society, and culture.

Recent studies reveal that AI could contribute up to $15.7 trillion to the global economy by 2030, making it one of the biggest economic opportunities available to countries and their leaders. Given the enormous potential that AI and ML offer, developments in AI have been predominantly driven by private sector technology actors, but growing interest by African governments has seen the start of conversations around “AI strategies” for growth and governance across the continent.

Africa is gradually making strides to develop its AI ecosystem through startup acts and research hubs, and has started to leverage AI to improve its public services in the following ways, according to a recent report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change.

Food security and agricultural output 

Spatial information from flying (drone) sensors has been used to analyse and manage crop health in Kenya and Mozambique, while drought-forecasting tools are being employed in South Africa to predict these events more reliably.

Health-care delivery 

AI chatbots have been used to triage scarce health-care resources in Rwanda while AI is being used for the drone-based delivery of blood in both Rwanda and Ghana.

Improved government services 

The government of Togo used AI to analyse satellite imagery to identify the country’s most vulnerable citizens to enable more effective delivery of economic aid during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Better communications and access to public resources Natural-language processing and translation tools for local languages are being developed, such as those being used in Ethiopia to reach different communities.

While the continent has made some progress, its share of the global AI market is still too small to actualise the $1.5 trillion market opportunity forecast by the United Nations’ Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) over the next eight years. Failure to address this gap in AI adoption means that Africa risks treading a path of slower tech adoption, which has already proven to have detrimental and compound effects. So, what can progressive leaders in Africa do to bridge the adoption gap?

AI adoption in public service

AI is reshaping public services, enabling more efficient and effective approaches through process automation, faster customer responses, operational efficiency and predictive technologies. Such systems are already in use across developing countries to help detect counterfeit drugs, improve farmers’ decision-making and agriculture yields, and help deliver welfare benefits more equitably and efficiently. When combined with machine learning (ML) and data analytics, AI tools can help leaders derive new insights and improve decision-making.

According to recent research, AI is the basis of technological improvements that would enable meeting 134 targets – equivalent to 79 percent – of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Achieving these SDGs in Africa could open up $12 trillion in market opportunities and create 380 million jobs by 2030 for the world’s youngest continent (by median age).

Other large-scale AI opportunities particularly relevant to Africa, but which could create significant benefits for the rest of the world, include:

• Decreasing the digital and information gap by using natural-language processing capabilities to translate and preserve some of the 2,000-plus languages in Africa – the world’s most linguistically diverse continent.

• Digitising, curating and sharing Africa’s rich ancient history by using ML, a process that has made the Timbuktu manuscripts widely available on Google’s Arts & Culture Hub, “Mali Magic”.

• Strengthening wildlife and conservation efforts in Africa, which is home to several biodiversity hotspots, through cloud-based databases and AI.

With such opportunities on the horizon, policymakers in Africa who want to deliver economic and social benefits to their citizens – and further afield – should consider not only accelerating but also shaping AI adoption in Africa. Adoption should not be limited to the private sector, however, with governments equally well placed to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by AI.

Despite these opportunities, many African nations and other least-developed countries in the Global South are not poised to take full advantage of AI, according to a PwC report titled, “Sizing the Prize”. Africa, Oceania and some Asian markets (beyond the developed parts of the continent) are expected to benefit the least from AI, with the total impact of AI estimated at 5.6 percent of GDP or $1.2 trillion by 2030 – compared with 26.1 percent of GDP or $7 trillion in China and 14.5 percent or $3.7 trillion in North America. According to the report, “developing countries will experience more modest increases due to the much lower rates of adoption of AI technologies expected.”

While the potential to accelerate AI adoption exists, emerging market data support PwC’s modest projections about the future of AI adoption in Africa. In the last quarter of 2021, global revenues from the AI software market were expected to reach $36 billion, with this figure projected to rise to $118.6 billion by 2025. The AI market in the Middle East and Africa is estimated to have been worth $870 million in 2021, with only marginal growth expected in the next three years.

Investment in Africa’s AI startups is also in its infancy. Although 2021 was a record-breaking year for tech investment – valued at $2 billion – across the continent as a whole, only 4.4 percent of this total went to AI companies (one firm represented 89.9 percent of this sector share) – compared with the 48.3 percent that went to 184 fintech companies. Beyond market size and funding, Africa lags behind other continents in government AI readiness. Countries in Africa rank lowest on the Oxford Insights Government AI Readiness Index, a global metric that ranks countries by how prepared their governments are to use AI in public services.

Africa was left behind during phases of the Third Industrial Revolution, with the compound effects still being felt today. Africa cannot risk missing out again on the technological progress promised by the Fourth Industrial Revolution: the cost, especially to the continent’s young and entrepreneurial population, will be too great.

Government policy has a strong role to play in shaping and accelerating AI adoption. The Tony Blair Institute for Change report on AI and ML analysed existing policy levers against a set of objectives that are most relevant to governments in Africa and recommended that African governments:

• Take a strategic adoption approach to identify, develop and test AI use cases that align with a country’s key national objectives, resources and capacities, noting that while policy has an important role to play in AI adoption within a country, not all policy levers are suitable for all national contexts. It explained that the strategic adoption approach allows countries along a spectrum of AI readiness to embrace and pilot AI use cases responsibly and effectively, and within the current capabilities of the technology – not the hype surrounding it.

• Prioritise responsible AI, defined globally as AI that promotes inclusive growth and is human-centred and transparent. The report adds that development and procurement of AI in Africa must be underpinned by these tenets to unlock the social and economic benefits of the technology for all.

• To unlock AI adoption, governments need a set of tools and systems. While indices and guidelines already exist, there is not a comprehensive roadmap available to countries embarking on their AI journeys. “At the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, we are working with governments on AI-related issues, potential partnerships and a framework for delivery. Within this report, we provide a toolkit that guides policy makers through the questions, processes and activities that can be used to accelerate and shape AI adoption in the short to medium term for positive economic and social impacts over the long run,” the institute explained.

AI capabilities and opportunities for Governments