AI's Next Frontier Isn't Where You Might Expect | Hardy Pemhiwa  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **Africa's Demographic And Digital Edge** - Africa is young and digitally native with 1.6 billion people and a median age of 19. - Rapid mobile adoption created massive digital skills and a foundation for new AI use cases. Transcript: Elise Hu And I look at them with a lot of humility. And I say to them, you're asking the wrong question. And of course, a lot of them look at me with surprise. I say, here is the right question. When will the world catch up to what Africa is doing with AI? But before I dive into AI, you've heard a lot about AI. Let me take you on a geography lesson. Africa is big. It's 54 countries, 1.6 billion people. And Africa is young. I'm one of the older ones. And I consider myself young. These are digital natives. Incredible digital skills. ([Time 0:01:06](https://share.snipd.com/snip/aa8e166e-6f7c-4fe6-adc4-b5530ea74f72)) - **Yamurai: An AI‑Amplified Community Entrepreneur** - Yamurai, a 24-year-old Zimbabwean, teaches, triages patients, and advises farmers using AI on a smartphone. - She earns three times more than peers by offering paid services via mobile money. Transcript: Elise Hu Please meet Yamurai. Yamurai is 24. She's a high school graduate, born in Zimbabwe and raised in Zimbabwe like me. Like millions of her peers, she's tech savvy. She can type faster than any of you. She knows all the shortcuts on WhatsApp. But up until now, her future would have been bleak. She would have been as unemployed as any of her peers. But for the fact that she has just graduated from one of the AI academies that we have on the continent. Early morning, Yamurai is teaching math using AI to over 200 students across five schools. These schools have got free internet. By midday, Yamurai has joined the local nurse at a health clinic that is not too far away from where she lives, helping with diagnosis, malaria, TB, bilhazia. That's a disease, by the way. And by the evening, some of her neighbors are coming to see MRI with soil samples and with diseased plants that she takes photos of and she's able to tell them what fertilizer, what seeds, What's happening to their maize crop. Yields are now up 40% where she lives. But Yemurai is not a teacher. She's not a nurse. She's not an agronomist. What is she? She's what we call an AI-amplified community entrepreneur. She's paid for each of these services that I described through her mobile money account. And she's earning three times more than the peers in her local area. And even those that are in the urban areas. ([Time 0:03:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cb5a3d84-ff0f-421e-a3bc-0ca7574d6ab4)) - **Build AI Locally With Local Data And Compute** - Build local AI infrastructure: local data, algorithms, and compute to produce relevant intelligence. - Prioritize inclusivity so excluded communities can access AI-powered services. Transcript: Elise Hu And we have now added a platform of interconnected data centers that are AI ready. And this is where AI meets the infrastructure that CASAVA has been building. Our plan now is to build Africa's first AI factory, using local data, algorithms, local compute capacity to produce local intelligence. We're building an AI ecosystem for those that were previously excluded. Because we understand that without AI infrastructure, Africa is going to fall further behind. Our AI factory is about bringing breakthroughs. It's about bringing job creation. ([Time 0:07:28](https://share.snipd.com/snip/be40c105-a85b-40e4-8866-ad2c8142fe6a)) - **Multiplication Over Substitution** - Africa's AI approach focuses on multiplication, not substitution, amplifying human capacity. - Constraints drive innovation that makes AI solutions efficient and deeply relevant. Transcript: Elise Hu This is Africa's AI revolution. It's not about substitution. It's about multiplication. We want to amplify human capacity. And we want to eliminate impossibility by bringing AI to those that the world had previously excluded. So what is our AI factory going to do? Already we're powering more than 12,000 AI developers. More than 1,100 startups across Southern Africa, East Africa, West Africa, and North Africa. 285 universities are going to be using our AI factory. And because we've already been working with enterprises for the first 30 years. 67,000 of Africa's largest enterprises, from banks to telcos to state-owned enterprises, are all embracing this vision of an AI-powered future for the continent. On a continent where the median age is only 19, this is not just an improvement of digital infrastructure. This is a revolution that we are bringing to Africa. Because the next 1 billion users of AI are not going to use AI the same way that the first 1 billion have been using it. ([Time 0:08:55](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0af3aa5c-bf4b-46c4-8501-db40b77d857f)) - **Scale Talent Alongside Infrastructure** - Train developers and startups at scale and link them to universities and enterprises to catalyze impact. - Invest in talent pipelines to turn infrastructure into real-world AI solutions. Transcript: Elise Hu Already we're powering more than 12,000 AI developers. More than 1,100 startups across Southern Africa, East Africa, West Africa, and North Africa. 285 universities are going to be using our AI factory. And because we've already been working with enterprises for the first 30 years. 67,000 of Africa's largest enterprises, from banks to telcos to state-owned enterprises, are all embracing this vision of an AI-powered future for the continent. ([Time 0:09:18](https://share.snipd.com/snip/79744f77-c922-4896-8f21-940a1ece507f)) - **Local Use Cases Shape More Robust Models** - The next billion AI users will use AI to do many roles at once and in local languages. - Models trained on African realities become more robust, efficient, and inclusive. Transcript: Elise Hu They are coming from places where a single AI amplified human must do the work of 10. They are building AI to not only diagnose diseases that some of us have never heard of, but to teach math and physics and chemistry in Swahili, in Debele, in Zulu, in Shona, you name it. They're building AI in order to detect counterfeit medicines. Africa has a big problem with counterfeit medicines. They're building AI to diagnose grops. They're building AI to amplify human possibility. Because in Africa, constraints have always driven innovation. That's why pay-as came from Africa. That's why mobile money came from Africa. Because we didn't have bank accounts to protect. And that's why AI models that are trained on African realities are more robust, more efficient, and more inclusive. So I'm going to go back to my initial question that I've been asked by so many, including ([Time 0:10:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/8062f88e-3dfd-4410-ac6c-d2a2b5d6b4f4)) - **Inclusive Impact Beats Click-Driven AI** - Africa deploys AI to serve mass public needs like education, health, and agriculture instead of attention-driven products. - Past mobile-money scale shows Africa can lead in inclusive technological adoption again. Transcript: Elise Hu I'm sure you agree with me that whilst we sit here in this conference talking about AI ethics, in Africa we are deploying AI to serve the many and not the few. We are optimizing AI for impact and not for social media clicks. 30 years ago, the experts on Africa said it would take 50 years for Africa to have the kind of mobile telephony that we have. And they estimated that it would require $50 billion to do it. Well, I have news for you. 70% of the mobile money transactions that are going to happen in the world today are going to happen on African soil. And guess what? Africa is ready to do it again. ([Time 0:11:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/d93784f1-b537-44b6-bb8e-396026149fc9)) - **Design For Constraints To Drive Adoption** - Design AI for local constraints: low bandwidth, mobile payments, and multi-role users to maximize adoption. - Focus on affordable, relevant, and accessible AI that amplifies human potential. Transcript: Elise Hu We want to make AI inclusive, accessible, relevant, and affordable. Because the future of AI is not just going to be written in Silicon Valley. The future of AI is going to be written in the Silicon Savannah in Kenya. It's going to be written on the streets of Lagos. It's going to be written in thousands of villages that some of us have never heard of. There are millions of Yemurais out there that are writing the future of AI, solving problems that we didn't even know existed, building a future where AI amplifies human potential Instead of replacing it. In London, they are worrying about whether teachers are going to lose their jobs because of AI. In Africa, we are embracing AI to solve the shortage of teachers. In New York, they are building AI algorithms in order to trade stocks faster. For us, it's about AI that can increase crop yields and reduce mortality amongst five-year That's the future of AI. So this is not just Africa's AI moment. This is AI's Africa moment. ([Time 0:12:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3e94b0b6-4435-4ad2-81e0-279f9ccc4de9))