Tunisia Aims to Become a Major Player in Artificial Intelligence in Africa
Tunisia is showcasing its ambition to become a major player in artificial Intelligence (AI) in Africa, thanks to its progress in electronic governance. According to the Oxford Insights Government AI Readiness Index 2023, the country is among the top-ranked on the continent, alongside South Africa, Seychelles, and Mauritius. This is a valuable asset, as the digitization of public services can generate essential databases for developing algorithms adapted to local realities.
However, the reality is more contrasted. Like many African countries, Tunisia suffers from a serious "data deficit." Although a National Open Data Strategy exists, a large part of public datasets remains difficult to access due to a lack of coordination and technical capabilities. As a result, AI startups like Instaware have to create their own datasets, which slows down their development and increases their costs.
Another major obstacle is the near-absence of computing power. Africa represents only 1% of the world's data center capacity, according to Xalam Analytics. No African supercomputer is listed in the TOP500.org ranking, making the training of complex AI models particularly expensive. Adnene Labidi, founder of Instaware, illustrates this limitation: due to the lack of affordable cloud solutions, he had to invest in costly graphics cards to develop his computer vision models.
Despite these obstacles, several Tunisian actors, such as Instadeep, recently acquired by BioNTech, and Fairconnect.ai founded by Moez Ben Hajhmida, are continuing their work to advance AI on the continent. On the side of large firms, Aïcha Mezghani and Mohamed Malouche, both leaders at Deloitte Africa, are advocating for strengthening ICT ecosystems and encouraging infrastructure sharing.
To unlock the potential of AI in Tunisia, experts are calling for an acceleration of digital transformation, better opening of public data, incentives for sharing non-sensitive private data, and financial support to enable startups to access cloud services. In the long run, the creation of regional, shared computing centers could become a pragmatic solution to reduce costs.
