Africa Lagging Behind in Artificial Intelligence Development
CEO of Sendemo Highlights Challenges and Opportunities at AfricaArena
Abderrahmane Chaoui, CEO of Sendemo, emphasized the stakes of artificial intelligence (AI) in Africa during the first day of the 7th edition of AfricaArena at the Tunis City of Culture. This comes at a time when the world is witnessing a massive investment race in AI.
Tech giants such as Alphabet, OpenAI, Meta, and Microsoft have recently raised astronomical funds, reaching $50 billion, $55 billion, and $37 billion, respectively. By 2027, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, predicts that developing a model like GPT-6 could require up to $100 billion.
Meanwhile, Moody's anticipates that global data center infrastructure will need to absorb trillions of dollars in the coming years.
In this competitive context, Africa seems to be lagging behind. The continent has only 145 data centers, and 53% of its population lacks access to electricity. This puts Africa in a position of dependence, risking becoming a mere consumer of infrastructure developed elsewhere.
Regarding AI financing, Africa's spending is expected to reach $3 billion in 2024, with a forecast to double to $6.6 billion by 2026. Although there are some advances, such as the announcement of new hyperscale data centers in South Africa and Kenya, the infrastructure remains largely insufficient to meet growing needs.
The lack of specialized AI talent and weak interactions between academia and the private sector exacerbate this situation. However, promising initiatives are emerging, including excellence universities like Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), as well as Google's research center in Accra, which are starting to train qualified professionals. Nevertheless, the continent still faces obstacles, such as unfavorable regulation and unequal access to the internet and education.
Chaoui distinguishes between two types of AI based on their transformative potential: AI that aims to develop basic skills to interact with it, and transformative AI, which focuses on applied research and collaborative projects between universities and enterprises. Many high-potential applications are emerging in various sectors, including:
- Agritech: crop monitoring, pricing, and distribution.
- Fintech: credit scoring and debt facilitation.
- Commerce: chatbots, customer assistance, and sales forecasting.
- Logistics: robots and predictive algorithms.
- Health: genomics and cancer detection.
- Mobility: autonomous vehicles and large-scale automation.
- Smart cities: energy production and distribution.
For AI to become a true driver of development in Africa, Chaoui stresses the importance of establishing a clear vision of its objectives by strengthening internal capacities and fostering synergies between the private sector and academic institutions.
