AIMS CEO: Africa Cannot Afford to Miss the Digital Revolution

President and Chief Executive Officer of The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Thierry Zomahoun

October 16, 2018//-The President and Chief Executive Officer of The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS), Thierry Zomahoun has bemoaned that, African as the youngest continent of the world has already lost the analogue revolution and therefore cannot afford to miss the digital revolution.

According to him, leaders must make conscious effort to ensure that Africa takes over the leadership of machine inteligence since it is going to affect every aspects of life including leadership, academia.

“Africa is the youngest continent and has the talents to lead the emmanting machine intelligence revolution and technological revolution.Articificial intlliegnce (AI) is going to revolutionalized  and impacted every aspects of our lives and we have no choice the wave is coming and the wave is huge,” he cautioned.

Mr. Zomahoun  said this when speaking with this reporter at the launch of the first and foremost Machine Intelligence (MI) programme, African Masters in Machine Intelligence (AMMI) at the Kigali Convention Centre,

He said the outdooring of AMMI is timely because MI has come to stay and  Africans can and should be doing cutting-edge research calling the need for young Africans to be given the opportunity to use advance research to solve the many challenges the world is facing.

He suggested that, in order not to be left behind in this era of MI, that is where there is the need for Africans to get involvedsince MI also comes with its own setbacks.

He said there are two major challenges MI has to tackle to ensure all inclusion naming them as bias and  the perception of equity but Africans can also help themselves to write their own story.

“This is the reason why it is important for Africans to get involve, when you land at airport in Europe or USA and you see machines there screening people, those are intelligence machines and what is in the system have been built by people who have no background for Africans, or for black faces or whatever so you can get discriminated, the machine can go biased about you not because they have something specific about you but because the people who worked on the system, AI have themselves in mind.” He noted.

This is why African perspectives and cultural perspectives must be integrated in the whole Artificial Intelligence technology by Africans themselves.

“For the past 15 years we have been trying hard with partners, governments and a special thanks to the government of Rwanda for that specific matter, we have been trying hard to on reinventing the university of the 21st centrury, it doesn’t happen overnight but we will reach that stage” he noted.

Mr. Zomahoun indicated that, the university of 21st century fosters critical thinking, problem solvings and research experts. Adding that the research centres of AIMS has already produce over 500 research papers which have been published in an international peer review journals.

“This means simply in concrete terms, in per capita terms, probably this is one of the highest research outputs of any academic research and learning institutions on the African soil” he said.

According to him, AIMS has already deployed over the past 15 years a Pan-African ecosystem of knowledge and innovation which include research, top masters degree, PHD programmes, industry linkages, innovative and creative teacher programme and the Next Einstein Forum which seeks to make Africa the next global science hub.

“Today African Masters in Machine Intelligence is bringing AIMS to new heights and we are so excited that for the very forst time on the African soil this is happening and it is happening from Rwanda to radiate the whole continent” he added.

He said currently, they have 31 students who were selected through a rigorous processes for the AMMI programme to join the existing 48 AIMS students.

He lauded facebook and google and all of AIMS other supporters for their immense support.

He urge African institutions, govenments, businesses, industries leaders to position themselves and compete for these talents in the fields of science.

The Minister for Education Rwanda, Dr. Eugene Mutimura, on his part said AIMS is one of the key efforts that the government finds quite important because it is built on capacity building for young African students and the future generation.

He said “Capacity building and providing talents to young Africans is the only way we can support our continent to grow in many aspects.”

Dr. Mutimura said AIMS is an important and a significant pan-African initiative which will build the capacity of African youngsters.

Speaking about AMMI he said it could not be underestimated, “We believe machine intelligence is important because it will support various efforts that Rwanda or the continent are doing to revolutionalised many aspects of our lives, particularly when it comes to medical diagnosis, when it comes to speeding up safe industries or processes and scientific discoveries.”

Adding that, AMMI is also will support the efforts of Rwanda and Africa to analyse big data and also inform big decision making in various areas not only in education but various fields including transport, agriculture and many others that are expected to revolutionalised the continent.

“The young Africans students who are going to start this programme are very honoured because they are the first cohort and I think the programme is quite important because it will build their capacity but also help those who are behind them to provide world class research and continue to build their careers” he noted.

He advised them that as the new cohorts of the programme they are expected to do a lot and  be aware that AIMS and the governement of Rwanda and the various governments of Africa were solidly behind them to support.

African Masters in Machine Intelligence launched in Kigali

The African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in collaboration with Facebook and Google launched the African Masters in Machine Intelligence (AMMI) in Kigali, Rwanda.

AMMI is going to be a one year Masters programmme in Machine Intelligence (MI) which is revolutionizing critical aspects of our lives. It enhances medical diagnosis, improves industrial processes and enables scientific discoveries.

The  programme which is going to produce the next generation scientists and critical thinkers currently has students from across Africa precisely 11 countries with over 40% being female.

By Diana M. Kodie

 

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