By: Nana
Appiah Acquaye
The African Union
Development Agency-NEPAD (AUDA-NEPAD) has launched the ATLAS Umoja AI policy
workstream to address governance questions around artificial intelligence and
support the development of AI that better reflects African languages, cultures
and contexts.
The policy workstream was
launched during the AUDA-NEPAD Presidential Roundtable last week, which was
attended by John Giusti, Chief Regulatory Officer at GSMA and President of the
Mobile for Development Foundation.
Giusti said AI could be one
of the most transformative technologies of the current era, but highlighted a
significant gap in the representation of African languages in existing AI
models.
“AI could be one of the most
transformative technologies of our time, yet less than 2% of African languages
are meaningfully supported by today's AI models,” Giusti said.
He said the gap presents a
barrier to closing Africa’s mobile internet usage gap, noting that 960 million
Africans are not using mobile internet despite living within coverage.
ATLAS Umoja AI was created
to help develop AI that better reflects African languages, cultures and
contexts.
The launch of the policy
workstream, chaired by AUDA-NEPAD, is expected to bring questions around AI
governance into discussions involving African institutions and key government
stakeholders.
According to Giusti, the
initiative will support efforts to ensure that important AI governance
questions are addressed in Africa, by African institutions and key government
stakeholders.
