The Director of Research and Innovation at the Africa Sustainable Energy Centre (ASEC), Dr. Elvis Twumasi, has urged Africans to overcome fears that Artificial Intelligence (AI) will replace jobs and instead focus on how the technology can be applied to create economic opportunitie, particularly within the informal sector.
Speaking at the AI for Africa Workshop, Dr. Twumasi stressed that AI should be seen as a tool for empowerment, not displacement.
“The informal sector in Africa is very large, and we realise that connectivity is an issue…
“So, one thing is that as AI experts, as most of us are, we could look at how we could start compressing some of these AI ideas to start working offline, right?” he noted.
He explained that offline applications of AI could transform sectors like agriculture, where many livelihoods are rooted.
“So we could have AI for farmers, an AI app for farmers, where it’s on their phone, that they could communicate with them while they are on the farm without connectivity.
“We could have an AI app that helps farmers even detect whether they have the diseases in their plants and all that without connectivity,” he suggested.
Dr. Twumasi added that in the past few years, AI has already proven its ability to make knowledge accessible to a wide range of people, regardless of their educational background.
