The African Growth Financial institution (AfDB) and expertise large Intel have joined forces to equip three million Africans and 30,000 authorities officers with superior synthetic intelligence (AI) abilities.
According to an announcement on the AfDB’s web site, the collaboration goals to revolutionize the African digital ecosystem.
Boosting Africa’s digital transformation
The initiative goals to equip many Africans with abilities in superior applied sciences like synthetic intelligence, robotics and knowledge science, that are essential for enhancing financial development and productiveness throughout Africa.
The partnership goals to coach Africans in AI, permitting the continent to play a extra lively position within the expertise’s growth and contribute to its ongoing innovation.
The coaching program is predicted to positively influence varied sectors, together with agriculture, well being and training. Addressing socioeconomic challenges and enhancing productiveness could assist foster sustainable growth and enhance Africa’s general high quality of life.
Bienvenu Agbokponto Soglo, Intel’s director of presidency affairs Africa and Worldwide Authorities Affairs chief expertise officer liaison, expressed Intel’s enthusiasm for the partnership. Soglo mentioned that Intel needs to work with African governments to make superior applied sciences like AI accessible to everybody, no matter location, gender or ethnicity, serving to individuals take part within the digital financial system.
In response to the assertion, the partnership goes past particular person coaching. It additionally helps African international locations, regional teams and continental organizations develop constant insurance policies and guidelines for digital applied sciences like AI, 5G and cloud computing, making a unified strategy to digital transformation throughout Africa.
Africa and AI
Though African international locations are at the moment attempting to catch up within the AI discipline, Nigeria not too long ago made vital progress by launching its first multilingual large language model, aiming to steer in AI growth throughout the continent.
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Regardless of its efforts, Nigeria, like many different African international locations, faces a major expertise hole in constructing AI expertise that rivals the capabilities of tech giants like OpenAI, Google and Meta.
Furthermore, the excessive value of coaching AI fashions poses a considerable barrier for a lot of people and organizations exterior the tech business, hindering their means to take part within the AI revolution.
Citing OpenAI for example, the corporate’s CEO, Sam Altman, mentioned the high training cost for GPT-4 and sought to raise up to $7 trillion for a project addressing the huge world scarcity in semiconductor chips.
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