Artificial Intelligence in Tanzania, what’s happening.
This blog post is the summary of the report “Artificial Intelligence in Tanzania, what’s happening.” The fast-track report showcasing who is doing what in the AI technology in the country. The report is among series of reports that are produced by Sahara Ventures to unveil what is happening in the African Innovation and technology entrepreneurship ecosystem.
In the past few months, there have been different initiatives to promote the growth and adoption of AI technology in different sectors in Tanzania. The #BotnarChallenge, Deep Learning Indaba Dodoma and the AI for Health Symposium are among the few. Tanzanian technology ecosystem is growing very fast with more high-tech communities being established every day from the early days of Dar Google Technology User Group (DarGTUG) and Mozilla Community to currently where we have Andela Learning Community, Tanzania Blockchain Community, Tanzania Developers Community, Tanzania Python Community, etc
Youths with AI-related startups and projects in Tanzania are trying to catch up with the rest of the world by coming up with innovative AI-based solutions to address problems in the health sector, agriculture sector, service delivery, education, etc. From the recent world bank sessions on building human capital in Africa, Africa has a better chance of leapfrogging the continent’s digital economy. Tanzanian youths are not left behind and they are making the most of it. The increased availability of open source platforms and knowledge sharing platforms such as Google AI and IBM Digital Nation Africa has created an opportunity for technology enthusiasts African youths to catch up with the technology, African researchers to carry research in AI-related fields and policymakers to learn the technology. What is even more interesting, the innovators are using these technologies to solve relevant challenges facing the continent. Applications like Dr. Elsa, an AI-powered health assistant for healthcare providers. The startup is looking to solve the problem of a physician to patient ratio which currents stand at 1:20,000 in Tanzania.
The report has four parts; the first part is identifying existing startups in the Tanzanian ecosystem that are adopting AI technologies for different sectors, the second part is identifying the existing AI projects carried by universities students in Tanzania zooming in the University of Dodoma, College of Informatics and Virtual Education (CIVE), the third part is a survey response on the perception of 60 experts, lecturers, and students towards AI technology adoption in Africa and the last part is on the foreseen challenges and opportunities of the technology.
The report can be downloaded from Sahara Ventures Website here.
