The program aims to teach many Africans about the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) like robotics, AI, and data science.
Big Tech company Intel, and The African Development Bank together teach 30,000 government officials and three million Africans about advanced artificial intelligence skills.
This cooperation came to light during the most recent AFDB Annual Meetings In Nairobi, Kenya. The aim is to revolutionize the digital landscape in Africa as stated on the AfDB website.
Advancing Africa’s Digital Revolution
The main purpose of the project is to help Africans learn important skills for the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). It involves robots, working with data, and artificial intelligence. These advanced skills will help in the development of the economy and productivity in Africa.
The collaboration aims to teach them about artificial intelligence. So that they get expertise and get involved in the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) in this field. So they will be able to bring more innovative ideas and solve issues.
These new skills will make a huge difference in the fields of healthcare, farming, and schooling. Their lives get better by dealing with financial and societal problems and making things more productive.
Intel’s Director of Government Affairs Africa and Chief Technology Officer Liaison for IGA, Bienvenu Agbokponto Soglo, expressed the company’s enthusiasm about the collaboration. According to Soglo, Intel wants to work with African governments. They make sure that cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) are accessible to everyone. There is no discrimination of where they live or who they are, and to help people in the digital economy.
As the statement clarifies, cooperation does more than provide individual training. It also supports the development of similar policies and laws for digital technologies. This also includes artificial intelligence (AI), cloud computing, and 5G by African countries, groupings of countries, and continental organizations. This will guarantee that Africa’s digital transformation takes a similar course.
AI in Africa
Nigeria has made significant progress in developing its first multilingual large language model (LLM). Even though African countries are striving to improve their AL capabilities. Nigeria wants to lead Africa in the development of AI.
Like many other African nations, Nigeria is making an effort. However, it lacks the skilled labor force necessary to produce AI technology on par with that produced by large corporations. These include Google, OpenAI, and Metafurthermore. The high cost of training AI models makes it difficult for many individuals and organizations outside of the tech sector to take part in the AI revolution.
Using OpenAIas an example, the CEO, Sam Altman, discussed the high cost of training GPT-4 and expressed a desire to raise approximately $7 trillion to address the global shortage of semiconductor chips.
