Despite the continent’s booming urge for AI also lies challenges hindering AI adoption and presents strategic approaches to address these obstacles, specifically targeting Africa’s socio-economic and environmental needs.
In addition, the study proposes a comprehensive framework for integrating AI into Africa’s sustainable development efforts, offering tailored AI-driven strategies that align with the continent’s unique context. This framework provides a valuable resource for AI researchers, policymakers, and practitioners working towards sustainable development in Africa.
AI has progressively transformed from a niche technological innovation to a powerful tool capable of solving complex and multidimensional problems across various sectors.
Its applications in sustainable development are promising, offering state-of-the-art changes in areas crucial for economic growth, social equity, and environmental sustainability.
In recent years, there has been a growing interest in harnessing the capabilities of AI to address pressing challenges in Africa, a continent that is often disproportionately affected by issues such as poverty, climate change, and lack of access to basic services.
Meanwhile, AI can be characterized as the branch of computer science that focuses on the creation of intelligent agents, which are systems that perceive their environment and take actions that maximize their chances of successfully achieving their goals.
This involves the simulation of cognitive processes that are associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and language understanding.
Specifically, AI systems use algorithms and dynamic modeling to process data, make decisions, and learn from outcomes, often surpassing the speed and accuracy of human capabilities in various tasks. Specific applications of AI include natural language processing (NLP), speech recognition, and image recognition.
Sustainable development, on the other hand, refers to the organizing principle for meeting human development goals while simultaneously sustaining the ability of natural systems to provide the natural resources and ecosystem services upon which the economy and society depend.
While AI holds immense potential to accelerate sustainable development in Africa, its application faces several challenges that are not adequately addressed in current research.
In Africa, where the challenges are as diverse as they are significant, AI offers a promising tool to accelerate progress towards the sustainable development goals (SDGs) established by the United Nations in 2015. These goals aim to address global challenges such as poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, peace.
For example, AI-powered applications in agriculture can predict weather patterns and optimize planting cycles, thus boosting crop yields and resilience to climate variability.
In healthcare, AI models are being developed to diagnose diseases from medical images, significantly improving the reach and quality of medical services in underserved regions.
Despite the promise, there remains a critical gap in current literature concerning AI’s role in addressing the unique socio-economic and environmental challenges faced by Africa. Most existing studies generalize the findings from other regions, often overlooking Africa’s distinct contexts.
A Guest Editorial