Johannesburg, 29 Oct 2021
NVIDIA GTC, the global conference for AI innovators, technologists and creators, is stepping up its focus on emerging markets following a phenomenal response to a new Emerging Markets track at GTC earlier this year.
Kate Kallot, Head of Emerging Areas at NVIDIA, says GTC, expected to attract over 200 000 AI industry professionals next month, is seeing fast-growing participation from emerging markets.
“The Emerging Markets track at GTC was launched earlier this year and was met with a great response. Over 20 000 developers from 95 countries in Africa, Latin America and the Middle East signed up for the track. We saw a jump of around 30x in the number of registrations from across Africa,” she says.
“Africa has the world’s fastest growing community of AI developers, but in the past, visa challenges may have prevented African researchers from attending in-person AI conferences in the US and Europe. Now that GTC is virtual and free to attend, we see thousands of attendees and presenters participating from emerging economies including South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe, Trinidad and Tobago, Ghana and Indonesia.”
Kallot says: “The AI revolution is clearly under way in Africa. African developers are using AI and NVIDIA technology in a variety of ways, such as maximising crop yields with Jetson and honouring Olympic athletes with Omniverse. Africa is positioned to be at the forefront of tech – with less 'legacy' technology in place, it means start-ups have a clean slate for developing new business models. And start-ups in Africa won’t be facing the same challenges as those in say, San Francisco. Challenges to local communities are unique to those communities.”
With such strong growth in emerging market participation and an estimated 3 million developers in the emerging market regions, NVIDIA has increased its focus on these regions at the next GTC.
This November, founders, engineers and researchers from emerging markets are coming to GTC to deliver talks across a variety of topics such as emerging technologies, the Emerging Chapters programme, AI in action and panel discussions.
NVIDIA’s Emerging Chapters programme is a new initiative that enables local communities in emerging areas to build and scale their AI, data science and graphics projects. Linking with the NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute, it provides training and development opportunities to members across all emerging markets. Thirty-plus African developer community groups have joined Emerging Chapters, fostering a growing network of AI experts. Emerging Chapters is also expanding across Latin America, the Middle East, South Asia and other emerging markets hungry for AI.
This year, some of the key sessions in the emerging markets track will include:
- Bridging the Last Mile Gap with AI Education – a panel discussion on democratising AI, and using AI to solve real-world community problems in emerging markets.
- Unleashing African Talent in the Age of AI – a discussion on Africa’s fast-growing self-taught talent pool, and ways to advance their learning to meet global market requirements. John Karama, founder at Ada Labs and AI Center of Excellence, will discuss the top 10 ways to help African developers unleash their aspirations.
- Bottom up innovation: How start-ups are leading AI transformation in Africa – a panel discussion on collaboration needed between start-ups, public sector and IGOs (UN offices) to drive AI innovation in Africa.
- Latin America’s Growing Artificial Intelligence Wave – panel discussion in which influencers from governments, industry and academia discuss the state of AI in Latin America.
GTC will also feature talks on global trends in AI, computer graphics, data science and more, with nearly 500 free sessions, multiple tracks, in-depth training and workshops, and networking and brainstorming opportunities.
To find out more and register for the next NVIDIA GTC, go to https://www.nvidia.com/gtc/.
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