Societal impacts of AI in Africa

Africa is currently experiencing a demographic boom that is largely young and urban. Unlike Germany with a median age of roughly 47, the US at 38, or China at 37, the median age in Africa is roughly 19. In addition, this demographic of African youth is expected to double to 225 million by 2055.

Seizing the opportunity in this demographic dividend isn’t a given. And while tools like AI and machine learning can help deliver services like healthcare and education at greater scale and reduced cost, there are also concerns about job displacement, whether we are equipping the youth with the rights skills and bad state actors who might seek to take advantage of deep fakes and the like to suppress political dissent.

And just consider that the SA Local Government Association says 62% of municipal councillors don’t know how to use a computer, to help temper your enthusiasms for revolutions of any kind…
To talk about this Michael Avery is joined by Nomsa Nteleko, the Founder & CEO OS Holdings, and the Chief Commercial Officer at Amathuba AI; Jade Abbott, Machine Learning Lead at Retro Rabbit & Johan Steyn, Business Day contributor on tech and AI and Chair of the Special Interest Group on AI and Robotics with the Institute of Information Technology Professionals of South Africa