Synapse - Africa’s 4IR Trade & Innovation Magazine - 4th Quarter 2022 Issue 18

Editor's Notes

REGIONAL EDITORS

Natasha Ochiel (Kenya) Co-Founder | CEO The AI Centre of Excellence natasha@aiceafrica.com

natasha-ochiel

In a bid to champion Artificial Intelligence in Africa, she co-founded the AI Centre of Excellence that aims to build sustainable value for AI in Africa by building capacity, building demand and building AI solutions through the Centre in Kenya.

Darlington Akogo (Ghana) CEO, minoHealth AI / KaraAgro AI & Member of United Nations ITU & WHO Focus Group on AI For Health

darlingtonakogo

Darlington Akogo is a global leader in Artificial Intelligence. He's the Founder and Director of Artificial Intelligence at GUDRA, and its subsidiaries; minoHealth; an AI Healthtech company based in Ghana.

Naomi Molefe MSc, Manager: Strategic Sourcing and Research at Discovery & Co-Founder & Chapter Director Women In Big Data, South Africa

Naomi is the co-Founder and Chapter Director for women in Big Data SA; a registered NPO that is part of a global community of 17 000 women. The learning community works with strategic partners to cultivate tangible opportunities for women, unlock latent potential through accessible training and act as a catalyst for the advancement of women in Big Data fields.

FROM THE EDITOR

Dr Nick Bradshaw Editor & CEO AI Media Group

nickbradshaw

Welcome to Edition 18

What can I say but simply THANK YOU ! AI Expo Africa 2022 was our biggest event to-date and a massive showing from the community for in person events right after COVID19. We had 60+ vendors exhibiting at the show plus 50+ speakers and panelists - it was amazing to hear the buzz and see people meeting again after the enforced 2 year break.

This 18th edition of Synapse is our 5th post-show edition of the magazine and there is so much to report on plus we have plenty of pictures and comments from the show floor. As 2022 draws to a close, one thing is clear. The African AI Ecosystem is stronger than ever with new use cases growing day-byday. Automated robot systems were showcased for the first time at AI Expo Africa and are now being deployed in African companies like hospitals and hotels. We are seeing a bigger focus on the legal and ethical policy aspects of deploying automated and intelligent systems plus a tremendous amount of local best practice being shared by delegates. Its clear that some African countries are now making this technology a key enabler for growth by uniting their ecosystem via policy, a national strategy and integrated community. Those that are doing that NOW are sowing the seeds for incremental economic growth and investment and there is a lot we can learn from their endeavours.

As we finalise our plans for 2023, and the year draws to an end, I want to thank everyone who supported us, contributed to the ecosystem and made a difference.

We wish you all a pleasant and happy Xmas break and look forward to seeing you all again in 2023 !! Best wishes from the team at AI Media HQ!

Magazine layout and design by Icandy Design: www.icandydesign.co.za

State of AI in Africa

2022 REPORT

Analysis

SOUTH AFRICA SETTING UP ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE INSTITUTE

/ Read original article here /

South Africa is establishing an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Institute to amplify teaching of robotics and coding in public schools.

Communications and digital technologies minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni revealed the plan yesterday, saying the AI Institute is being set up in partnership with the University of Johannesburg and Tshwane University of Technology, which are co-founder institutions, together with her department.

The minister addressed the G20 Digital Economy Ministers Meeting in Indonesia, emphasising the need to develop ICT skills. She explained that like most countries on the continent, SA has a youthful population, which is increasingly embracing the digital economy, as witnessed by the creativity and innovative nature of young people in the ICT space.

“ The teaching of robotics and coding in our public schools will further be enhanced by our soon to be launched Artificial Intelligence Institute that is being established in partnership with institutions of higher learning ”

As such, she said, it is essential for the country to invest significantly in modern training and skills development.

“At present, learners in over a thousand schools are designing and producing robots, both for gaming and to complete tasks the learners find tedious for human completion. Next year, learners in these and additional schools that will join this category will compete in a National Robotics Development Challenge.

“The teaching of robotics and coding in our public schools will further be enhanced by our soon to be launched Artificial Intelligence Institute that is being established in partnership with institutions of higher learning.”

Further, the minister said, government’s focus on digital skills includes creating platforms to support and promote the ability of youth, and small and medium enterprises, in particular start-ups, to develop digital content.

Turning to connectivity matters, the minister said this year government will finalise the roadmap towards the deployment of 4G and 5G networks, including to rural towns.

“We continue to work to attain the objectives of our SA Connect programme to ensure we attain universal access to the internet by 2024.”

Communications and digital technologies minister Khumbudzo Ntshavheni.

Start building custom tools and applications today.

Watch this technical session here Explore developer resources, learn more

NVIDIA Omniverse Ecosystem Expands 10x, Amid New Features and Services for Developers, Enterprises and Creators

When it comes to creating and connecting virtual worlds, over 150,000 individuals have downloaded NVIDIA Omniverse to make huge leaps in transforming 3D design workflows and achieve new heights of real-time, physically accurate simulations.

At GTC 2022 in March, NVIDIA announced new releases and updates for Omniverse — including the latest Omniverse Con nectors and libraries — expanding the platform’s ecosystem by 10x, and making Omniverse even more accessible to creators, developers, designers, engineers and researchers worldwide

Enhancing Content Creation With New Connections and Libraries

The Omniverse ecosystem is expanding beyond design and content creation. In one year, Omniverse connections, ways to connect or integrate with the Omniverse platform, have grown 10x — with 82 con nections through the extended Omniverse ecosystem. Some of the new features that were announced by NVIDIA include: Third-Party Connections for Adobe Substance 3D Material Extension and Painter Connector, Epic Games Unreal Engine Connector and Maxon Cinema 4D will enable live-sync workflows between third-party apps and Omniverse.

CAD Importers: These convert 26 com mon CAD formats to Universal Scene Description (USD) to better enable man ufacturing and product design workflows within Omniverse.

Asset Library Integrations: TurboSquid by Shutterstock, Sketchfab and Reallusion ActorCore assets are now directly available within Omniverse Apps asset browsers so users can simply search, drag and drop from close to 1 million Omniverse-ready 3D assets. New Omniverse-ready 3D assets, materials, textures, avatars and animations are also now available from A23D.

Hydra Render Delegate Support: Users can integrate and toggle between their favorite Hydra delegate-supported ren derers and the Omniverse RTX Renderer directly within Omniverse Apps. Now available in beta for Chaos V-Ray, coming soon for Maxon Redshift, OTOY Octane, Blender Cycles, and Autodesk Arnold.

Omniverse Enterprise Features and Availability Broadens

More updates are coming soon to Omniverse Enterprise, including the latest releases of Omniverse Kit 103, Omniverse Create and View 2022.1, Omniverse Farm, and DeepSearch.

Omniverse Enterprise on NVIDIA LaunchPad is available across nine global regions. NVIDIA LaunchPad gives design practi tioners and project reviewers instant, free turnkey access to hands-on Omniverse Enterprise labs, helping them make quicker, more confident software and infrastructure decisions.

Raising the Bar on Industrial Digital Twin

NVIDIA also offers NVIDIA OVX, a comput ing system architecture designed to power large-scale digital twins. NVIDIA OVX is built to operate complex simu lations that will run within Omniverse, enabling designers, engineers and planners to create physically accurate digital twins and massive, true-to-reality simulation environments.

More Omniverse Technologies and Features

Developer Tools: Omniverse Code, an app that serves as an integrated development environment for developers and powers users to easily build their own Omniverse extensions, apps or microservices.

DeepSearch: a new AI-based search ser vice that lets users quickly search through massive, untagged 3D asset libraries using natural language or images.

DeepSearch is available for Omniverse Enterprise customers in early access.

Omniverse Replicator: a framework for generating physically accurate 3D synthetic data to accelerate training and accuracy of perception networks — now available within Omniverse Code so devel opers can build their own domain-specific synthetic data engines.

OmniGraph, ActionGraph and AnimGraph: major new releases controlling behavior and animation.

Omniverse Avatar: a platform that uses AI and simulation technology to enable developers to build custom, intelligent, realistic avatars.

Omniverse XR App: a VR-optimized con figuration of Omniverse View that enables users to experience their full-fidelity 3D scenes with full RTX ray tracing, at 1:1 scale, coming soon.

To learn more about NVIDIA Omniverse, watch the GTC 2022 keynote from Jensen Huang.

New versions of Omniverse Kit, Create, View and Machinima.

THE ALAN TURING INSTITUTE LAUNCHES AI STANDARDS HUB

/ Read original article here /

This blog post provides some detail on what the AI Standards Hub is, how we built it, and why we hope you will join us on the journey.

What is the Hub for?

Technical standards are rapidly becoming key tools for the development, adoption, and governance of AI technologies. At the same time, the AI standardisation landscape – inherently international and increasingly complex – is growing harder to navigate.

Enter the AI Standards Hub. The Hub aims to help stakeholders across industry, government and regulators, civil society, and academia understand, use, and develop standards. This website is the backbone of the Hub – the home of the Standards Database, as well as complimentary policy and research databases, online training materials, community forums, and much more. The Hub’s work will also extend far beyond the website and involve live events, strategic research, and international engagement.

All stakeholders can benefit from the Hub’s breadth and depth of knowledge – from AI-deploying companies interested in shaping the standards landscape, to regulators wondering how standards will affect their regulatory purview. We are dedicated to ensuring that a diverse range of voices engage with AI standards and standardisation. To this end, we aim to equip community members from all groups – including civil society organisations, SMEs, and other groups currently underrepresented in standardisation activities – with the knowledge and tools required to become actively involved with AI standards.

How did we build the Hub?

The Alan Turing Institute, alongside its partner organisations BSI and NPL, organised a series of six roundtables with representatives from key stakeholder groups: established companies developing AI, large companies procuring AI, AI start-ups, regulators, civil society and consumer groups, and experts working with Standards Development

Organisations. The aim of the roundtables was twofold:

1. To understand user needs – i.e., to understand how the AI Standards Hub could help stakeholders meet their objectives and overcome their challenges in navigating the world of AI standards

2. To understand which thematic areas the Hub should focus on

We also conducted a survey of more than 300 interested individuals to gather additional insights on user understanding of, engagement with, and challenges related to standards. Through these outreach activities, we discovered that while stakeholders believe that AI standards are highly relevant to their goals and are very interested in both using and developing them, most have very little experience with standardisation. We asked each group to rate the importance of standards, along with their current level of thinking on the topic: for all groups, the importance they placed on standards outstripped the current extent of their thinking on the topic, demonstrating a clear need for the kind of work the Hub is set up to pursue.

The consulted stakeholders further solidified the case for the Hub by enthusiastically welcoming its proposed activities, noting that the AI Standards Database would be particularly helpful for achieving their goals.

What will the Hub do?

The Hub’s activities will coalesce around four main pillars:

1. Observatory: The AI Standards Database tracks and displays relevant published standards and standards development projects. This is accompanied by a database for AI-related policy documents from governmental or other official sources in the UK and around the world.

2. Community and collaboration: The Hub will serve as a home for the AI standards community, facilitating new connections, coordination, exchange of ideas, and collaborative problem-solving through online forums and live events

3. Knowledge and training: The Hub will publish e-learning modules and host training events with a focus on the kinds

of knowledge needed to effectively engage with the field of AI standardisation.

4. Research and analysis: The Hub will produce and share strategic insights to support the evolution of a participatory, technically and ethically sound, coherent, and effective global AI standards landscape.

Why should you use the Hub? hould you use the Hub?

The Hub will aid and equip a wide array of stakeholders to achieve their objectives with respect to AI standardisation.

Companies that develop or adopt AI solutions will have ready access to training modules and events, advice, and case studies on how to both adopt and shape standards. Some of these resources will be particularly valuable for start-ups and SMEs.

Regulators and policymaker will be able to gain new, issue- or sector-specific insight into standards and standardisation initiatives that are relevant to their regulatory objectives, as well as to strategic research on the relationship between AI standards and other governance tools.

Civil society and consumer groups, often underrepresented in standards development, will be able to gain the skills and knowledge needed to get involved, from an increased awareness of how AI interacts with and impacts the people they represent, to a thorough grasp of how SDO working groups operate and how they can successfully contribute to standards development processes.

Academic researchers, similarly underrepresented in standards projects, will benefit from the Hub’s guidance on standards development, but also through access to information that can inform research about AI standards or help with the incorporation of standardisation-related considerations into the design of technical research.

How to get started using the Hub?

The Standards Database is up and running –explore its nearly 300 standards here

Create a user account to follow standards, participate in discussions, and connect with other community members here

SHOW PICTURES

SHOW PICTURES

SHOW COMMENTS

“AI that Champions Inclusion is key”

DEPUTY AMBASSADOR JANNEKE VRIJLAND DUTCH EMBASSY SUPPORTERS OF OUR SMME / WOMEN IN AI ZONE

“I met so many amazing African AI experts, entrepreneurs, investors, policy makers and students”

FRED WERNER HEAD OF AI4GOOD UN ITU

“And a huge thank you to Dr Nick Bradshaw and his team from AIESEC  on the great work they did in managing the event”

LUNGA FENI - DIRECTOR THE CORTEX HUB

“At AI Expo Africa, we’ve met with AI companies, retailers, telcos, software companies, and government officials.” MICHALSONS LAW FIRM

“As someone passionate about transformation through tech, it was great to have conversations about the accellerating growth and valuable impact Africa is making towards AI”.

TUMELO SINGO CHANGE LEAD | STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP AT ABSA

“It’s great to see how South Africa’s AI ecosystem is growing and hear about the latest trends at AI Expo Africa” Status is reachable”,

MICHAEL SHAPIRO - TRADE COMMISSIONER (DIGITAL INDUSTRIES) AT CANADIAN HIGH COMMISSION

“The exhibition was wonderful and had a turnout of more people than we expected” QP DRONE TECH, JHB, SA

“Visiting the AI Expo Africa this past weekend was nothing short of amazing.”

TAREEQ SALEY, TOYOTA SA

"Had a blast today at Africa’s Largest B2B B2G AI RPA & 4IR Smart Tech Trade Show & Conference!! So much potential on the African continent, endless possibilities, so blessed to form part of it! “ STEF VAN DER WALT, ISREAL FOREIGN TRADE ADMINISTRATION

“Interesting discussions about the 4th Industrial Revolution, data regulation and artificial intelligence in Africa.”

MARCUS ZULU, LEGAL COUNSEL AT ABSA GROUP

“What a great moment in our time at AI Expo Africa, met new friends and partners from all over the world and an experience of new technologies coming to the industry.”

XOLANI DUBE, AUTOMATION ENGINEER, INTELLISCIENT TECHNOLOGIES

“What an amazing global initiative in ensuring a sustainable future enabled through AI solutions!”

PHILLIP DU PLOOY, MANAGER AT MAZARS FINANCIAL SERVICES AFRICA

SHOW COMMENTS

“Thank you to the amazing AI trailblazers who partnered with us. And a huge congratulations to Dr Nick Bradshaw and his team for a spectacular event”.

MAPASEKA SETLHODI, POLICY OFFICER IN ECONOMIC RELATIONS, DUTCH EMBASSY

“It's been an incredible two days at the AI Expo Africa. It is good to see the progress and growth in the community and the innovative solutions developed on the continent in this space. See you again next year.” WILLEM NAUDE, HEAD OF BIG DATA & AI, MPESA AFRICA.

“This was such an insightful and fun event. I am so grateful that I got a chance to meet amazing people and learn more about the diverse industry. Definitely looking forward to the next one”

ASHLEIGH MABAIRE, UNIVERSITY OF JHB.

“What an awesome event.”

AASIYAH ADAMS - FOUNDER ABAGUQULI NPC AND CINGA SOLUTIONS

“Congratulations Dr Nick Bradshaw and all his team for putting this amazing event together!”

GUILLEM MARTÍNEZ ROURA, AI AND ROBOTICS PROGRAMME COORDINATOR AT UNITED NATIONS, ITU.

"In summary, AI Africa was an amazing event, and I would love to attend again in 2023”

JEAN MATTHEE, HEAD OF SALES & MARKETING, GLUCODE

“We had a blast at the AI Expo Africa 2022” LOCUMBASE

“Dr Nick Bradshaw, I think you achieved your goal here - a stepping stone toward an AI-powered future for Africa. Thank you and the team for having us. To the next one.”

ZWAKELE MBANJWA, TECH LAWYER, MICHALSONS

“This was a phenomenal event, I take my hat off and applaud you for once again a magnificent event”.

KGOSI MOLEFE, RESILIENCE ENGINEERING, STANDARD BANK GROUP

“We had so much fun at the AI Expo Africa chatting with really inspiring people”. MELIO AI

“Fun, interesting and exciting career moment. Thank you Dr Nick Bradshaw for arranging the AI Expo Africa”

SYLVESTER ALBANIE, VC / INVESTOR

“Thanks to all those from great companies, universities and students in the field of AI, IoT and data science who attended. We enjoyed sharing our live demos of Wifi location services and analytics” QUENTIN DAFFARN, FOUNDER AND MANAGING DIRECTOR OF UC-WIRELESS

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META AI DEVELOPS MODEL

to translate across 200 different languages, including 55 African languages

/ Read original article here /

Driving inclusion through the power of AI translation

Real-World Application

Building for an inclusive metaverse: A translated metaverse: bringing people together on a global scale

As we build for the metaverse, integrating real-time AR/VR text translation in hundreds of languages is a priority. Our aim is to set a new standard of inclusion—where someday everyone can have access to virtual-world content, devices and experiences, with the ability to communicate with anyone, in any language in the metaverse. And over time, bring people together on a global scale.

Real-World Application

Translating Wikipedia for everyone: Helping volunteer editors make information available in more languages

The technology behind the NLLB-200 model, now available through the Wikimedia Foundation’s Content Translation tool, is supporting Wikipedia editors as they translate information into their native and preferred languages. Wikipedia editors are using the technology to more efficiently translate and edit articles originating in other underrepresented languages, such as Luganda and Icelandic. This helps to make more knowledge available in more languages for Wikipedia readers around the world. The open-source NLLB-200 model will also help researchers and interested Wikipedia editor communities build on our work.

AI Research For Real-World Application

Applying AI Techniques to Facebook and Instagram for translation of low-resource languages

We’re committed to bringing people together. That’s why we’re using modeling techniques and learnings from our NLLB research to improve translations of low-resource languages on Facebook and Instagram.

By applying these techniques and learnings to our production translation systems, people will be able to make more authentic, more meaningful connections in their preferred or native languages. In the future, we hope to extend our learnings from NLLB to more Meta apps.

Experience The Tech

Stories Told Through Translation: books from around the world translated into hundreds of languages

Experience the power of AI translation with Stories Told Through Translation, our demo that uses the latest AI advancements from the No Language Left Behind project. This demo translates books from their languages of origin such as Indonesian, Somali and Burmese, into more languages for readers— with hundreds available in the coming months. Through this initiative, the NLLB-200 will be the first-ever AI model able to translate literature at this scale.

The Tech

Machine translation explained: How does the open-source NLLB model directly translate 200 languages?

 Stage 1: Automatic dataset construction Training data is collected containing sentences in the input language and desired output language.

 Stage 2: Training

After creating aligned training data for thousands of training directions, this data is fed into our model training pipeline. These models are made up of two parts: the encoder, which converts the input sentence into an internal vector representation; and the decoder, which takes this internal vector representation and accurately generates the output sentence. By training on millions of example translations, models learn to generate more accurate translations.

 Stage 3: Evaluation

Finally, we evaluate our model against a human-translated set of sentence translations to confirm that we are satisfied with the translation quality. This includes detecting and filtering out profanity and other offensive content through the use of toxicity lists we build for all supported languages. The result is a well-trained model that can directly translate a language.

The Innovations

The science behind the breakthrough

Most of today’s machine translation (MT) models work for mid- to high-resource languages—leaving most low-resource languages behind. Meta AI researchers are addressing this issue with three significant AI innovations.

Automatic dataset construction for low-resource languages

The context

MT is a supervised learning task, which means the model needs data to learn from. Example translations from open-source data

collections are often used. Our solution is to automatically construct translation pairs by pairing sentences in different collections of monolingual documents.

The challenge

The LASER models used for this dataset creation process primarily support midto high-resource languages, making it impossible to produce accurate translation pairs for low-resource languages.

The innovation

We solved this by investing in a teacherstudent training procedure, making it possible to 1) extend LASER’s language coverage to 200 languages, and 2) produce a massive amount of data, even for low resource languages.

Modeling 200 languages

The context

Multilingual MT systems have been improved upon over bilingual systems. This is due to their ability to enable "transfer" from language pairs with plenty of training data, to other languages with fewer training resources.

The challenge

Jointly training hundreds of language pairs together has its disadvantages, as the same model must represent increasingly large numbers of languages with the same number of parameters. This is an issue when the dataset sizes are imbalanced, as it can cause overfitting.

The innovation

We’ve developed a Sparse Mixture-of-Experts model that has a shared and specialized capacity, so low-resource languages without much data can be automatically routed to the shared capacity. When combined with better regularization systems, this avoids overfitting. Further, we used self-supervised learning and large-scale data augmentation through multiple types of back translation.

Evaluating translation quality

The context

To know if a translation produced by our model meets our quality standards, we must evaluate it.

The challenge

Machine translation models are typically evaluated by comparing machine-translated sentences with human translations, however for many languages, reliable translation data is not available. So accurate evaluations are not possible.

The innovation

We extended 2x the coverage of FLORES, a human-translated evaluation benchmark, to now cover 200 languages. Through automatic

metrics and human evaluation support, we’re able to extensively quantify the quality of our translations.

Learn

The Journey

Research milestones

Meta AI has been advancing Machine Translation technology while successfully overcoming numerous industry challenges along the way—from the unavailability of data for low-resource languages to translation quality and accuracy. Our journey continues, as we drive inclusion through the power of AI translation.

“ As we build for the metaverse, integrating realtime AR/VR text translation in hundreds of languages is a priority ”

About No Language Left Behind

No Language Left Behind (NLLB) is a first-of-its-kind, AI breakthrough project that open-sources models capable of delivering evaluated, high-quality translations directly between 200 languages—including low-resource languages like Asturian, Luganda, Urdu and more. It aims to give people the opportunity to access and share web content in their native language, and communicate with anyone, anywhere, regardless of their language preferences.

more about the science behind NLLB by reading our whitepaper and blog, and by downloading the model to help us take this project further.

ADVANCING YOUR WORLD

The use of Artificial Intelligence forms a core part of Telkom’s commitment to technological advancement and digital transformation.

Our technologies can help close the inequality gaps in South Africa, including the education system.

In September izwe.ai was launched.

It is an AI platform developed by Telkom, in collaboration with Enlabeler, which transcribes and translates speech into text from English and local languages. izwe.ai aims to deliver local-language transcription and translation that gives all learners equal access to learning material.

This will also have a far-reaching impact on the health and business sectors, allowing for academic and legal transcription; contact centre transcription and analysis; and media production services.

Visit www.izwe.ai for more information.

Invest in Tshwane

South Africa’s Capital City, the City of Tshwane, is situated in the province of Gauteng, the economic centre of South Africa. As the seat of government, Tshwane is the country’s administrative hub and houses 134 embassies, 30 international organisations making it second only to Washington DC in terms of the concentration of the diplomatic and foreign missions. It is also home to over 30 Johannesburg Stock Exchange-listed companies as well as various multinational companies.

The city is home to four universities and various research institutes and its knowledge and information industry is well-developed. Tshwane has a high literacy rate, a large concentration of financial and business services in the region, support of educational institutions and communication infrastructure, including broadband capacity.

Why Tshwane?

Tshwane is the knowledge centre of South Africa. The City has a high concentration of academic, medical, social science, technology and scientific institutions which produces 90% of medical, science and technology research in the country and 60% of the country’s overall research output. The city has a student population of 60000 and high levels of literacy, giving investors access to a skilled workforce and continuous learning.

Your investment is safe with us, we are governed by investment protection legislation, The Protection of Investment Act 22 of 2015 which specifically gives foreign investors similar rights and protections available to South Africans.

We have great investment incentives such as the duty drawback schemes that provide refunds for import duties paid on the materials used in the production of goods that are re-exported.

There are no restrictions for foreign investors to acquire property in the country.

There are no restrictions on foreign investors to acquire companies or businesses in South Africa.

Tshwane has a well-developed infrastructure and road network and is centrally situated on the national road network with direct links to Mozambique, Botswana and Namibia along the east-west N4 route, and with Zimbabwe along the south-north N1 route.

iTMaster is a Proudly South African Business, which was established in 2001. We will celebrate our 21st year of existence in September 2022. The Covid 19 pandemic did present us with unprecedented challenges. Through its leadership, tenacity and prayer, iTMaster weathered the storms to emerge stronger, better and determined to be a business of impact. We remain focused on making a monumental impact in the lives of South African’s by democratising the access to technology in schools.

The 4th and 5th Industrial revolutions will work in tandem with 4IR bringing in high levels of digitization, automation, innovation and 5IR keeping us honest and ethical as we use 4IR technologies in the way we live, learn, work and play. At iTMaster, we are driven by innovation. Whilst many see innovation as the latest and greatest technology, we believe innovation is woven into every aspect of our business. We look for innovative ways to solve problems, drive efficiencies, eliminate duplication and enable our customers to remain relevant in an ever-changing global economy. This innovation is further augmented by our alignment to ISO Standards, Health and Safety Standards and Sustainability commitments.

Our country is still dealing with the residual impact of Covid 19, global economic pressures, the war in Ukrain, escalating oil prices and threats of nuclear war. This is further exacerbated by high levels of unemployment; skills drain and low GDP growth. Whilst these issues paint a picture of doom and gloom, we remain upbeat and energised to make a major impact in this country. This we believe can be done through Education. Nelson Mandela said, “The power of education extends beyond the development of skills we need for economic success. It can contribute to nation-building and reconciliation. He also said, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

We pride ourselves in our agility and unique ability to scale. Agility, defined as the need to be flexible, is fundamental in an industry where 4IR is driving rapid evolution. Our ability to scale is built on one of our cardinal pillars of Enterprise Development, where we enable micro enterprises to deliver and execute in projects and opportunities as an extension of iTMaster.

iTMaster also makes a point of investing in collaboration and has created an ecosystem to work with EME and QSE companies in all nine provinces. We bring them in, train them, and inject the iTMaster DNA, which focuses on providing quality services, with speed and agility at scale, and in doing that promote true transformation.

We dream of democratised access for all South Africans, with a special drive to harness the future, which we believe comes from our human capital development. To date ITMaster have given access to more than 390 000 students across South Africa, and will continue to do so until, we solve this grand challenge in our local context.

“

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever ”

– Mahatma Gandhi

HEATHTECH FIRMS DEVELOP AI TOOL FOR HIV/ AIDS PATIENTS IN AFRICA

Cape Town-based healthtech firm Vantage Health Technologies and the Institute of Human Virology Nigeria (IHVN) have unveiled an artificial intelligence (AI) project, which they say will significantly improve care for HIV/ AIDS patients in Africa.

antage, a company in the BroadReach Group, says techenabled solutions have become critical in the management and treatment of patients in Africa to improve the patient care processes.

The companies say an estimated 25 million people are living with HIV in Africa and 8.1 million of these are virally unsuppressed.

To assist with patient care, Vantage and IHVN have been piloting an AI-enabled patient retention solution, which they say has been able to predict and positively influence the behaviour of high-risk HIV/AIDS patients.

This development comes on the back of growing calls from the International Telecommunication Union and World Health Organisation to expand the use of AI in the health sector on a global scale.

The Vantage AI solution helps HIV/AIDS out-patients to keep taking their medicines, as well as return to hospitals or clinics for regular scheduled treatment.

The patient retention solution uses data from the patient history to predict if they will miss their next clinic appointment, with the

assumption that missing the appointment means the patient will drop off treatment, as they are not present to collect their medication.

Annika Lindorsson Krugel, solutions manager of Vantage Health Technologies, explains: “The solution uses a machine learning model to identify patients at high-risk of missing their next appointment and produces patient lists that are given to clinical staff to conduct various interventions to prevent patients from missing their next appointment.

“SMS messages, calls and home visits for those without phone numbers are then arranged to provide personal attention to each patient ahead of their scheduled clinic appointments.”

The solution has been implemented in HIV treatment and care programmes across Nigeria and South Africa, and Krugel says it is yielding similar successes.

“The solution is an innovative example of what can be achieved when artificial intelligence truly powers human action.”

In Nigeria, the patient retention solution algorithm was trained on 330 000 IHVN patients, and the organisation says this pilot

project was focused on the approximately 5000 identified at-risk patients.

Of these, IHVN says, 91% of patients on the predictive list who received an intervention (SMS, phone call or home visit) were up-todate in the month of intervention, meaning they were retained in care. This compares to 55% retention in a comparison group who did not receive the intervention.

Mercy Omozuafoh, programme manager for care and support at the IHVN, says her teams have been using the AI solution as a tool to prioritise existing interventions for high-risk HIV/AIDS patients in Nigeria.

“The project has demonstrated the effectiveness of proactive tracking of patients living with HIV and has made us understand the importance of interventions we are implementing. It has broadened our minds and we are able to scale up the solution to include more facilities,” says Omozuafoh.

She adds the predictive model was rolled out to about 30 000 patients at the General Hospital Kudwa at Bwari in the Federal Capital Territory, the Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital in Lafia in the Nasarawa State, and General Hospital Ahoada in the Rivers State.

Hospitals around the world face huge internal logistic problems as a result of the labor intensive environment, many small packages need to be delivered on time from various depots to wards where patients need their medication, medical supplies, linen, and meals.

We piloted our delivery module on a custom configured robot to deliver scheduled drugs in a live hospital environment and found the following improvements:

MICROSOFT EXPANDS ITS AI FOR GOOD RESEARCH LAB TO EGYPT AND KENYA

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Microsoft has announced the expansion of its AI for Good Research Lab to Cairo and Nairobi. The expansion aims to close the climate data divide by researching and developing AI machine learning in areas in Africa worst affected by the climate crisis.

Africa’s Climate Crisis Research has revealed that high climate risk correlates with income and health inequalities. The findings also coincide with the fact that two billion people in the Global South were found to be living in some of the most climate-risk areas between 2008 and 2018.

Despite Africa contributing less to the climate crisis than other continents, they continue to bear the brunt of extreme climate events. The consequences of the existential threat to our planet will be felt mainly by those living in the Global South due to the West’s unfair actions, which is why Microsoft’s expansion has come at a highly critical time.

“The climate crisis must be addressed, and to do that, a wide range of ideas

and approaches must be considered. It’s essential that we support and enable those living in climate-impacted regions to be front and center in development solutions,” said Microsoft in an online statement

Microsoft’s Expansion To The Global South

Microsoft will also expand its collaboration with satellite platform Planet Labs to combine its high-quality satellite imagery with AI technology to find more climate solutions. The move, first announced by Brad Smith, Microsoft’s Vice Chair and President, will see the tech corporation develop data scientists

and a new African AI Innovation Council to help oversee and drive the mission.

“We are committed to partnering with and providing digital technology and resources for those living, working, and innovating in the Global South to help close the climate data divide and create the climate solutions of the future.”

Through the expansion of these collaborations, Microsoft AI for Good Lab and Planet Labs will be able to use satellite imagery to focus on challenges specifically nominated by the AI Innovation Council to help close the climate data gap in Africa once and for all.

Students protesting for climate change in Africa

NEW REAL-TIME AI PLATFORM ANNOUNCED AT AI EXPO AFRICA

Jay van Zyl is the founder of the Delaware-based ecosystem.ai. (Photo: Supplied/Ventureburn)

Main picture: The ecosystem.Ai platform revolutionises provides the infrastructure, tooling, and preintegrated technologies to create, test and deploy, rapid and scalable models to production. (Photo: Supplied/ Ventureburn)

Now entering its fifth year, the AI Expo Africa is Africa’s largest business-focused artificial intelligence (AI), robotic process automation (RPA) and Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) trade event. It is scheduled for today and tomorrow in Johannesburg.

ecosystem.ai, based in Delaware, was previously only available to select enterprise clients. It is described as the first low-code platform to combine fully pre-configured behavioural algorithms with a powerful realtime scoring engine.

Designed to help companies provide highly personalised and relevant engagements and offers by continuously learning from

real-time human interactions. The innovative SaaS solution provides endless opportunities to gain new knowledge, discover untapped markets, and deliver exactly what customers want, based on their actions in real-time.

“As we’ve moved into a far more digital world, human digital engagement needs to change. We need to find new ways of engaging with people and we need to do it more reliably and more specifically to focus on the individual,” says Van Zyl.

“And that’s something we’ve seen with our enterprise clients. We’ve seen how that’s transformed their real-time customer interventions and it’s led to significant business uplift and new revenue streams.”

According to Salesforce figures, 72% of consumers say they expect companies to understand their needs and expectations.

Human context and customer behaviours are constantly changing. So, it’s imperative that companies continuously learn and evolve

“

The ecosystem.Ai platform revolutionises this approach by providing the infrastructure, tooling, and pre-integrated technologies to create, test and deploy, rapid and scalable models to production ”

with ever-changing behaviour in order to provide the personalized experiences that customers expect.

But continuous learning calls for an approach that goes far beyond the limitations of classical machine learning, which often uses frozen data sets. This can’t account for shifts in human behaviour or seasonal events after that point in time. Also, the technology and expertise to deploy predictions can be prohibitively expensive and complex for companies to implement on their own.

The ecosystem.Ai platform revolutionises this approach by providing the infrastructure, tooling, and pre-integrated technologies to create, test and deploy, rapid and scalable models to production.

Once deployed, real-time engines track feedback and engagement with easily configurable recommenders that are continuously running in production. Companies now have the capability to evolve with ever-changing human behaviour or sudden surges in popularity. They gain real-time insights, see trends or new segmentations as they unfold, and can take decisive action based on how customers respond to offers, messages, or engagements the moment they happen.

The platform is low code, integrates seamlessly into any environment and is designed to foster collaboration across all business units. Business users can create, monitor, and manage prediction projects to drive success.

Data scientists have access to a vast array of functions and enjoy the ease of data ingestion, viewing, enrichment, exporting and graphing all through one product interface. While technologists have code-based customizations that are flexible, and easy to implement and integrate.

To learn more about the platform and how it enables businesses to build realtime recommenders that continuously track human behaviour and provide highly personalised customer interactions, visit ecosystem. ai or click here to sign up for a free trial of the product.

New report analyses THE STATE AI GOVERNANCE IN AFRICA

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Emergent Technology, News, Research

Anew report by Power Singh Inc. partner, ALT Advisory, analyses the state of Artificial Intelligence (AI) governance in Africa by mapping the instruments that exist both at the continental level and domestically. Noting that the use of AI by both the public and private sector has grown exponentially in recent years and continues to do so, the report highlights that unanticipated or problematic consequences are also now beginning to be seen. In response, states have grown increasingly interested in the governance of AI: there are over 700 AI policy initiatives that have been implemented by 60 countries around the world since 2017. African countries appear to be falling behind the trend, scoring poorly on global indices of AI readiness as compared to other regions.

Positively, AI appears to increasingly be on the policy agenda at the continental level, with various working groups, resolutions, and reports addressing the human rights implications of AI and how to leverage AI and related technologies for development.

At the domestic level, the report finds that no African country has dedicated

AI legislation in place, although Mauritius has partial legislation that specifically deals with licensing procedures for entities that provide investment and portfolio management services enabled by AI. Further findings include:

 30 countries have data protection legislation that addresses automated decision-making in some way.

 4 countries have a national AI strategy.

 1 country (Tunisia) has a draft policy or a white/green paper on AI.

 13 countries have established an expert commission or taskforce on AI.

 6 countries include AI as a priority in their National Development Plan, while 4 other countries’ plans make partial mention of AI.

It is hoped that the report will spur further discussion and action on the appropriate regulation of AI in Africa to better protect the rights and freedoms of all people as this new technology become increasingly prevalent.

The report can be accessed here

ALT Advisory’s newly launched portal containing further research on AI in Africa can be found here.

Please note: The information contained in this note is for general guidance on matters of interest and does not constitute legal advice. For any enquiries, please contact us at connect@powersingh.africa.

EXPANDING THE ARM(E3)NGAGE PARTNERSHIP NETWORKS IN AFRICA

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New partnership with mLab set to strengthen digital skills development amongst youth in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG, SOUTH AFRICA, September 20, 2022 /EINPresswire.com/ -- High youth unemployment compounded by a lack of access to digital skills and resources represents some of the major challenges that need to be addressed to bridge the inequality gap in South Africa. Education-based technologies play a vital role in levelling the economic playing field, facilitating better access to training tools and curriculum and ultimately, provide access to jobs. The new partnership between Arm(E3)NGAGE, and Mobile Applications Laboratory (mLab) in South Africa, aims to bolster the local skills development landscape by enhancing access to hardware, software, digital tools and training opportunities.

The partnership was announced on September 19th, 2022 at the AI Expo Africa event, hosted at the Sandton Convention Centre. AI Expo Africa is the largest business-focused Artificial Intelligence (AI), Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and 4IR trade event in Africa, uniting thousands of buyers, suppliers & innovators across the region.

The partnership announcement attracted interest from various practitioners in the Information Communications and Technology (ICT) sector. As part of the signing ceremony Stephen Ozoigbo, Senior Director, Emerging Economies at Arm stated, “The partnership with mLab enables Arm(E3)NGAGE, and our ecosystem partners to significantly contribute towards South Africa’s digital skills revolution by providing access to cutting edge technologies that will accelerate South Africa’s progress in the fourth industrial revolution (4IR)”. He continued, “Learners across various age groups and capabilities will get the opportunity to experiment with Arm-based tools and resources that could foster their interest in STEM-based learning while advancing their career paths in the digital economy.” These resources include various forms of hardware devices and learning kits from Arm partners such as Arduino and Microbit. Arm's rich ecosystem of partners provides an incredible portfolio of worldclass ed-tech tools that are low power, energy efficient and uniquely designed to support learners at every level.

Nicoli Koorbanally, CEO of mLab remarked, “When the prospect of holding, building and testing technology can be realised at a young

“ The partnership with mLab enables our ecosystem partners to significantly contribute towards South Africa’s digital skills revolution by providing access to cutting-edge technologies.”— Stephen Ozoigbo ”

age, it can spark creative thinking, an entrepreneurial mindset and the motivation to build innovative solutions that can solve local challenges. Closing the skills gap, and developing this calibre of digital talent is what mLab wants to supply into the South African economy,” she says.

The partnership will primarily benefit mLab’s Ecosystem Acceleration offering that focuses on building a pipeline of digital talent for its Skills and StartUp Accelerators. Ecosystem activities include short 4IR training, digital literacy, school robotics and coding workshops amongst other programmes. In addition to providing mLab programme participants with training kits, laptops and software licences, the agreement with Arm(E3)NGAGE also seeks to provide access to international initiatives for talented local youth and establish a Technology Hub with mobile digital labs (Lab in a Box) that will be able to service remote locations and communities. With over a decade of experience in delivering impact, mLab is known for having a strong focus on empowering youth, women and previously disadvantaged communities. This partnership supports this endeavour by fostering a conducive learning and development environment for South Africa’s youth.

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Nicoli Koorbanally, CEO of mLab “Closing the skills gap, and developing this calibre of digital talent is what mLab wants to supply into the South African economy,

WHY AFRICAN BANKS ARE INVESTING IN AI

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Artificial intelligence (AI) is now firmly in the sights of African banks. From better understanding consumer needs to reducing risk, there are few areas where AI can’t make a key impact on operations.

Christine Wu, Managing Executive, Customer Value Management at Absa Retail and Business Bank, views artificial intelligence (AI) as an important enabler of the journey to a new banking model that is truly responsive to customer needs.

“All areas of the bank’s operations can benefit from AI – from the frontline, where we can make use of smarter profiling and customer interactions that are needs-based and tailored to a customer’s profile, to customer servicing, where we can include clearer and more bespoke solutions to customers before they even ask – such as the automation of repetitive tasks,” says Wu.

AI is often defined as human-like intelligence achieved by machines – any

system that “perceives its environment and takes actions that maximise its chance of achieving its goals”. Advanced AI, according to experts, is also capable of learning and problem-solving.

Enthusiastic take-up AI has been taken up enthusiastically across Africa, although the expert view is that it needs some fine-tuning to adapt to the African social and cultural environment. Still, the potential is as great in the banking landscape as it is in online and mobile transactions.

Google is already in a position to benefit from the trend through its AI lab in Ghana, and Microsoft has its African Development Centre, based in Kenya and Nigeria, whose aims include spurring AI innovation.

“ Yet, many of the most popular AI banking solutions, particularly in customer services, have been created in a way that makes incorporating them into existing systems relatively easy. ”

Financial institutions across Africa are investing in the development of AI. The AfDB announced last year that it had approved a grant of just over $1m to support the creation of AI-backed systems to process customer complaints for the national banks of Ghana and Rwanda, and the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission of Zambia.

The monies come from the Africa Digital Financial Inclusion Facility (ADFI), a fund created by the AfDB and donor partners that seeks to advance digital financial inclusion across Africa.

“Facilitating sound policies and regulations, including those that enhance consumer protection and catalyse financial inclusion, is a key mandate for ADFI. With the proliferation of digital financial services, the financial industry needs innovative mechanisms for customer recourse and tracking for regulators. The Sinitic Africa project is one such solution,” said Sheila Okiro, ADFI’s coordinator.

Deepening customer relationships with chatbots

Ria Pinto, general manager and technology leader, IBM South Africa, has seen the rise of AI in banking at first hand.

“It can be seen on the front end, smoothing customer identification and authentication, mimicking live employees through chatbots and voice assistants, deepening customer relationships, and providing personalised insights and recommendations,” says Pinto.

Embracing the power of AI enables banks to launch a range of services to better meet the changing needs of customers. Chatbots are a relatively new phenomenon in banking, with the capabilities of these tools rapidly advancing as a result of technological advancements.

A chatbot, or chatterbot, is a software application used to conduct an online chat conversation via text or text-to-speech, in lieu of providing direct contact with a live human agent. In the last several years, many African banks have launched chatbots, some of which are standalone, while others reside on WhatsApp.

Nigerian financial organisation Zenith Bank introducing their AI-backed chatbot called ZiVA (Zenith Intelligent Virtual Assistant) on

WhatsApp last year to Nedbank South Africa also releasing their Enbi chatbot assistant, chatbots are an increasingly attractive AI tool.

Drive to improve customer service

The drive by African banks to bring AI into their operations is led in part by the need to improve customer service. Traditionally banks would need to employ often major customer service teams to be on-call for customer advice, complaints and questions. While this is still largely the case, the growth of AI is reducing the workload of staff and automating mundane tasks.

In customer services, where clients want a response quickly that fully addresses their issues, any tools that can speed up the process will save valuable staff time and improve customer satisfaction. “AI can play a key role in developing an intelligence behind common queries and creating responses that are tailor-made to those queries while improving over time.

In so doing, it can become more and more specific in shorter periods of time while reducing capacity demands,” says Wu.

Fraud detection can also benefit from the deeper incorporation of AI solutions. The quicker that IT security teams can identify potentially fraudulent activity and organise a response, the less damage these threats are likely to cause. With literally millions of data points being created in a single day at major banks, humans are unable to comb through all the information fast enough.

However, AI tools can be deployed to look for signs of fraud long before a human could. Automated AI systems can flag up potentially fraudulent activity and push this to skilled staff in the form of alerts, allowing personnel to focus on the most important tasks easily.

Relatively easy to incorporate

For some banks, the idea of adopting AI solutions can seem like a complex undertaking, especially for those institutions that have legacy infrastructure where data is stored in disparate silos. It’s also true that no two banks will have the same objectives or goals when it comes to how AI can be used in their operations.

Yet, many of the most popular AI banking solutions, particularly in customer services, have been created in a way that makes incorporating them into existing systems relatively easy.

“Increasingly, banks will harness the power of modern technology to give customers the financial services they want, where and when they need them, and to address the specific needs of the financial services industry where they operate,” explains Pinto.

“As we look around, we see that major incumbent banks in Africa are starting to think like platform companies – creating new operating and business models that deliver innovative products and services with competitive speed. Such banks are

doing more to harness the power of modern technology to customers’ benefit.”

Of course, if AI decision making is going to be deployed throughout a financial organisation, the firms need to not only trust that decisions are being made fairly but also that there is transparency.

“This trust in AI decisions is critical as it allows organisations to understand and explain AI-driven outcomes, making it essential for regulatory requirements and to reduce bias; and in the end, to achieve higher confidence in the quality of predictions in customer experiences,” explains Pinto.

Diverse benefits

AI-driven innovation can bring about benefits across an organisation in areas as diverse as customer service, fraud, risk and even cybersecurity. With even a relatively minor data breach or hack causing widespread financial and reputational damage, the use of real-time AI analytics can prove invaluable.

As AI continues to develop, there will undoubtedly be new uses and solutions for banks to consider. Training staff on the AI and IT skills needed to take advantage of AI now will pay dividends for the future as new innovations will be more easily integrated.

Finding the right AI partner is also an important consideration, with knowledgeable independent AI firms offering a great deal to banks which are at the beginning of their AI journey.

For banks that are yet to fully capitalise on the power of AI, Wu believes that starting where you see an overlap between value and lower risk can be an effective plan.

“This enables a safer environment for innovation before building confidence to scale to larger and more regulated spaces. Customer service is a great space to add value with the use of AI, through innovations such as chatbots, automated responses, etc. This can set the foundations and architecture for future rollouts in other areas of the bank,” says Wu.

“ All areas of the bank’s operations can benefit from AI – from the frontline, where we can make use of smarter profiling and customer interactions that are needs-based and tailored to a customer’s profile, to customer servicing, where we can include clearer and more bespoke solutions to customers before they even ask – such as the automation of repetitive tasks ”

DSN UNVEILS MACROTUTOR, AN AI-POWERED ONDEMAND LEARNING

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will require to participate, contribute, and compete in the global world.

As it has been generally acknowledged, digital literacy and hands-on computing skills will become foundational competencies which every professional must have. Hence, the need to start early through bespoke and context-aware learning interventions built on the peculiar challenges of the emerging market, especially in the areas of localized technological curriculum and distributed on-demand expert network.

Data Scientists Network (formerly known as Data Science Nigeria DSN) has launched a digital education access and delivery platform that helps schools and parents to prepare African youths for the future of work and the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

With a median age of 17 years and the increasing need for young Africans to participate in the digital economy, there is an urgency to prepare primary and secondary students in sub-Saharan Africa to access the over 230 million jobs which will require digital skills by 2030.

The product, “MacroTutor”, is an AI-powered, on-demand, and affordable

edtech solution for schools and parents to access the best quality teachers and digital learning content in expert areas such as Coding, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Programming, Machine Learning, Data Analytics, Interaction Design etc.

The platform will democratize access to world-class digital skill acquisition through a network of well-trained tutors who can deliver personalized and curriculum-based learning at students’ homes on a one-on-one basis or to a group of students in a school.

For schools, this will be a significant value-add to enhance the learning outcome of students while eliminating the additional cost of full-time digital/ICT teachers. MacroTutor will provide a cheaper alternative to high-quality teachers and world-class content at the rates that any low to mediumcost schools can afford.

With this inclusive, pervasive and more affordable access to digital skills, no child is left behind across the continent.

MacroTutor’s product innovation is aimed to bridge the capacity gaps between what is being currently taught in Nigerian schools and the future-ready skills that learners

Speaking on the initiative, Toyin Adekanmbi, the Executive Director of DSN, described it as “a creative and innovative approach to democratize computer and ICT education in Nigeria, which ensures that any school can offer world-class digital subjects and provide future-focused learning to students without any cashflow strain and an additional salary cost. Old students associations and Parents-TeachersAssociations can even support their schools with dedicated digital education teachers”.

MacroTutor will be the ultimate destination to access the best digital teachers at the most affordable rate for parents and schools who desire to prepare their students for the skills and expertise to drive global competitiveness in the future.

AI Summer camp at DSN

Schools can get a tutor on the platform by visiting here while parents can also download the app,

JOHANNESBURG BACKS ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE TRADE ECOSYSTEM IN SOUTH AFRICA

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Johannesburg Tourism Company through its Convention Bureau Backs Artificial Intelligence Trade Ecosystem in South Africa.

JOHANNESBURG, GAUTENG, SOUTH AFRICA November 24th, 2022 (AI Media Group) The newly reestablished City of Johannesburg entity, Johannesburg Tourism Company, recently partnered with Africa’s largest Enterprise Artificial Intelligence & Intelligent Automation trade event, AI Expo Africa, to showcase the growing trade, investment and job creation opportunities the sector has to offer. It has shown keen interest to have AI Expo Africa 2023 being hosted at the Sandton Convention Centre, Johannesburg, South Africa, with the new dates of 2nd-3rd November 2023 being recently announced.

Now entering its 6th year, the annual AI Expo Africa unites regional and international suppliers of the latest cutting edge 4IR technologies, from the biggest global brands to the smallest and newest local SMMEs. The core focus of the show are real world applications you can deploy today with an audience comprised of Enterprise and Government buyers, deployment & service providers, start-ups, educators, NGOs and ecosystem builders.

Rendani Khorommbi, Deputy Director of the Johannesburg Convention Bureau at the Johannesburg Tourism Company stated, “Given the recent challenges we have all

endured with COVID19, the return to inperson trade events was truly welcomed in 2022 and the City of Johannesburg Tourism Company was very keen to support the event to reach a larger audience in the Gauteng & Tshwane regions and to showcase the local and global tech ecosystem to regional and international buyers”.

The 2022 show was packed with new innovations such as an industrial robot showcase from Johannesburg Start-up Ctrl Robotics who have created unique software to work with service robots that are deployed in hospitals and hotels. Star of the 2022 show was Spot the robot via the University of Johannesburg who have been working with the Boston Dynamics robot platform that resembles a dog and deployed in various scenarios such as surveillance and industry inspections.

Dr Nick Bradshaw, CEO & Founder of AI Expo Africa stated, “AI Expo Africa 2022, our 5th Anniversary Edition, had a great turn out. The buzz from the show floor was amazing and it was clear to see the progress that has been made in the African AI Ecosystem since our first event in 2018. The show was attended by 60+ vendors & 50+ speakers and also hosted a Women in AI Zone, the Johannesburg Tourism Company SMME Pavilion, a Start-up Zone, a University R&D Poster Zone, an AI generated Art Gallery plus seven networking sessions and four Skills Workshops aimed at youth, students and entrepreneurs, giving them a free learning experience from the likes of NVIDIA, Arm and Intel. We even heard reports of several tech VCs having identified local tech companies they want to invest in.”

Khorommbi concluded, “Suppliers reported significant interest from buyers at

AI Expo Africa 2022. The global tech giant Arm signed a new partnership agreement with the regional tech accelerator M Lab to help drive skills & tech engagement with youth and rural community innovators. The newly launched “State of AI in Africa Report” also highlighted that 4IR technologies are being adopted across the board in Africa with South Africa positioned No.1 in this segment on the continent – another big reason why we are getting behind AI Expo Africa 2023.”

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Synapse Magazine is Africa’s first and only business quarterly publication covering developments across the continent in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Data Science, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) smart technologies.

Synapse offers industry executives, practitioners, investors and researchers relevant news, in-depth analysis, and thought leadership articles on trends around 4IR innovation and digital transformation in industries that include banking, retail, manufacturing, healthcare, mining, agriculture, education, and government, among others. With its insights, interviews and case studies, the magazine aims to be a voice for African 4IR practitioners, researchers, innovators, thought leaders, and the wider African AI community.

Since its launch in 2018, Synapse has amassed a combined readership of 31,300 across the Issuu platform (on which it is published), the AI Media Group’s email database, the AI Expo Africa Community Group on LinkedIn and the AI Media Group’s social media channels where the magazine is distributed. It also links to AI TV, Africa’s only dedicated YouTube streaming channel focused on 4IR business users and trade.

Over the years the magazine has established a significant following across Africa as well as globally, with readers from as far afield as the North America, South America, Europe and Asia. This makes Synapse a great marketing platform for startups and established tech companies to reach a broader community of buyers, investors and partners.

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