Africa has become an attractive target for international investment, underpinned by innovative solutions derived from the Internet of things, data analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).
This is according to Arthur Goldstuck, head of research consultancy at World Wide Worx, speaking yesterday at the Epicor Customer Conference in Johannesburg.
Discussing digital trends in Africa, Goldstuck explained the continent is poised to become the skills pool for the world, driven by significant growth in smartphone adoption.
He explained the top digital trends observed by the World Economic Forum for African entrepreneurs are mobile money, crowdsourcing, incubators, ICT infrastructure and the Internet boom.
"We're seeing tech incubators emerging from Cape Town to Cairo and ICT infrastructure is being developed across the African continent. In almost every country we're seeing governments committing themselves to improving ICT infrastructure by spending significantly on it. By 2050, Africa will have the highest population than any other continent. This means its consumer market will have to be served."
The big challenge for businesses, he continued, is to serve a massively emerging market of citizens who want to be treated like individuals. The answer to this obstacle is AI start-ups.
"There is only one way that you can really address the entire consumer market on a one-on-one basis, and that's by using AI. People think AI is not relevant in Africa, but it's even more relevant because of the continent's complex market, which has different requirements. The only way to deal with complexity on a mass scale is by adding automated processes which automatically recognise individual needs. In any country you can imagine, there are AI start-ups that are addressing very specific needs, serving consumers as individuals," he noted.
Explaining how AI start-ups operate, he used an example of the Huawei Mate 9 smartphone, which he said is the world's first smartphone to have machine learning built into it.
"The longer you use the phone, the more it learns your behaviour, your preferences and where it should be allocating computing power and the battery use of the phone."
In the next five years, he asserted, everyone who owns a smartphone in Africa is going to have some form of machine learning or AI in their hands through smartphones, and businesses should leverage the potential brought by this opportunity, he explained.
"Crowdsourcing has become another massive trend across Africa and probably the most interesting child of crowdsourcing is Ushahidi, a Kenyan software company that develops free open source software for information collection and interactive mapping."
One of Africa's strengths is the ability to put people first using technology adapted to what works in the various markets across the continent, he added.
"Were seeing massive innovations across Africa transforming all aspects of agriculture, fishery and the financial services, among others, so we're not just waiting for the world to help us innovate, we are innovating for our own needs, and some of these become powerful case studies for other countries," he concluded.
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