Africa risks missing out on AI revolution benefits

African economies risk being left behind in the artificial intelligence (AI) shift that is changing the way companies do business, with the continent’s low capacity for virtual storage and increasingly outdated mobile technology a cause for concern.

Businesses that incorporate AI into their processes require high speed connectivity and sizable data storage capacity, a fact that is now pushing tech firms to invest billions of dollars in virtual data storage facilities.

In Africa, according to the African Telecommunications Union (ATU), investments are still going towards closing a connectivity gap—bringing more people into the network especially in rural areas.

Although Africa has largely moved on from 2G technology, it is still seeing investment go into 3G and 4G networks, at a time when the rest of the world is leaning on 5G tech to support varied fields such as autonomous vehicle operations, urban management and content creation.

ATU Secretary General John Omo, in an interview last week on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Spain, told this publication that making the leap to the AI age will require investment by governments and the private sector into cloud storage and upgrades to 5G technology.

The continent also needs public education to prepare users to utilize the emerging opportunities that will come up as a result.

“Switzerland alone has more cloud space than the entire Sub-Saharan Africa. That’s how far we have to go as a continent in terms of establishing cloud computing and one network,” said Mr. Omo.

“Looking at the MWC, artificial intelligence has taken over how we’ll do business, whether in agriculture, media, ICT and others. There’s a fair amount of work to be done in this space in Africa, including in data legislation considering that AI runs mainly on data.”

A number of countries, including Kenya, have put in place data legislation to regulate the processing and usage of personal information by processors, as well as establishing a framework for licensing those who handle data.

In Kenya, the Data Protection Act was enacted in 2019. Across the EAC, Uganda also enacted its data protection law in 2019, Rwanda in 2021 and Tanzania in 2022.

“The key then is for our governments to embrace the fact that we are now in a data driven economy, where access and control of information can help in tooling AI to do what we need and want it to do, “said Mr. Omo.

Even as countries bring in supporting legislation however, the EAC region and sub-Saharan Africa as a whole will still need to address the internet coverage and usage gaps which blunt the impact of new technology on the economy.

Global mobile network association GSMA, in its 2023 State of Mobile Internet Connectivity Report, says that just 25 percent of the total population in sub-Saharan Africa—or 290 million people—has mobile internet coverage, against a global average of 51 percent.

Of the remaining population, 15 percent or 180 million individuals suffer from a coverage gap, meaning they live in an area not covered by a mobile broadband network, while 59 percent or 690 million have a usage gap, meaning they live within the footprint of a mobile broadband network but do not use mobile internet services. Access to smartphones is a key determinant to getting mobile internet, and in extension, the opportunities opened up by 5G technology.

In Kenya, smartphone ownership in urban areas stood at 56 percent and in rural areas at 37 percent by the end of 2022, as per the GSMA report.

However, 10 percent of the smartphone owners were not utilizing mobile internet, and out of this number, 27 percent were not aware of mobile internet at all.