Four Areas AI Can Transform in Africa, Bill Gates

Bill Gates was interviewed in Senegal recently. According to Gates, there are four areas where AI can thrive in Africa, and close the equity gap.

Farming

AI could pull together weather forecast info, satellite images, sensors news headlines, and aggregate, analyze and predict when farmers will face diseases or outbreaks with crops. This will give them the lead time to take preventative measures.

Education:

In developing world often you have 100 or 200 children to one teacher in a class. Smart kids have to slow down, kids that struggle do not get attention they need. AI can be each student's personal teacher. It can advise on what to learn, and personalize the experience for children and focus on local language, images, video avatars, and the right cultural context . All kids can ask as many questions they want, and without judgement.

Patients

Here patients across the continent can get the medical support where there is none or if it takes a long time to see a practitioner. Chatbots, in local dialect, and with the ability to communicate in low literacy areas, could be effective. Patients could get immediate results. Challenge here is also in data sets. African data sets need to be programmed, because current LLMs have western biased info, especially on disease.

Health Care Workers

AI tools can assist with clinical notes, recommend the whole course of action for a doctor or health care worker. For example, look at a radiology scan, AI would highlight risk factors for a doctor, who would either agree or disagree, but the time saving groundwork would be done.

When thinking about AI and Africa, use cases, APIs and innovations can not happen easily because of these challenges:

• Lack of data centers
• Lack of electricity
• Lack of connectivity
• High price of data and subscription models
• Western biased data sets

Once African talent solves this, AI potential is massive. Game on.