Africa’s technology space is ready for the revolution of Artificial Intelligence (AI) but needs a organised platform to thrive.
This was the view of tech experts at the KPMG Digital Summit 2019 organised by KPMG Nigeria in Lagos recently.
Delivering his welcome address, Partner and Lead, Digital Transformation, KPMG Africa, Boye Ademola, said that the KPMG Digital Summit 2019 which is the third in a series of events, is designed by the company to provide insights to organisations on how to leverage on digital platforms to create and capture value that is transformational.
Ademola explained that this year’s summit, themed “Leveraging Insights and Experience to Scale”, was chosen to focus on the application of Artificial Intelligence, User Experience Transformation and Design Thinking in helping businesses gain competitive advantage especially in Nigeria.
Speaking during a session on Powering Decisions with AI, the founder of Dbrownconsulting Limted, David Brown, said Africa is ready for the use of AI while adding that a lot remains to be seen if it can take advantage of it to solve simple problems.
“AI is here but the question is how ready are we in terms of using AI to solve our problems . There is a school of thought that says AI will replace us in terms of human intelligence as well. There are certain things that AI would replace but then for Africa, how do we take advantage of that?
“Frankly speaking, we really need to do something for AI, we do not need to be data scientists but we can set up platforms and solve simple problems with applications you already have. So there are three things, have a platform, harness that as well as applications to be able to use it effectively,” Brown said.
Corroborating him, Head of AI and Robotics, at KPMG Center of Excellence , Israel, Roland Kab, said, that organisations must change to adapt to the digital era while adding that Africa most especially Nigeria needs to be ready for tidal wave of digital transformation.
THISDAY