AI Adoption in African Higher Education

Experts urge African universities to adopt AI strategically, focusing on value, cost, training, and strong policies to build trust and ensure sustainable integration in higher education.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Experts are urging African universities to adopt AI strategically, focusing on value, cost, training, and strong policies to build trust and ensure sustainable integration in higher education. From over 2,300 cities and 176 countries, we bring you the Good Morning Africa podcast. Good morning, Africa. Welcome aboard your boss on everything business in Africa. I am Rither Dawn for more follow us on Twitter, Avocate Financial News, and you can find me at Rithadong for. African intelligence is rapidly entering Africa's higher education space, but experts say universities must be strategic in how they adopt it. Speaking during a panel on AI in higher education, Professor Eugene Date suggests that institutions should only deploy AI solutions that solve real problems and add measurable value. He emphasizes the need to balance impact with financial and infrastructure costs while ensuring both students and faculty are properly trained. We feature his submissions during YS12 in Qatar Doha.

SPEAKER_03 1:04

And one of the things we need to look at is to try to have a strategic approach which maximizes the impact of AI while at the same time minimizing cost. And yeah, when I talk about cost, I'm looking at financial costs, I'm looking at costs when it comes to infrastructure and also cost that comes to the burden of trying to implement AI. Now to do this, you need to ensure that whatever solution you're deploying is solving a problem. Now you don't develop a solution before you try to look for a problem to use it to fix. So the question is what's the value addition? Unless you have a value, it's really adding a value to whatever you're doing, you have no business having it in there. The next thing that you need to look at is to look at the human side of it. Are the people trained? Here are the students trained to adopt it, are the faculty also trained to adopt it? There's issues of partnership and collaboration because deploying AI comes at a lot of cost. Now can one university pick up the chap and implement? We can also look at going out for solutions that already exist in existence. Instead of deploying something that's socially evil. Looking at the UMCP approach where I think used to be started from the um charge GP. Now, this is something that is there. There are free products. Can you find a way to use this free product to try to adapt it to solve um whatever problems that you have? We also need to look at the issues of sustainability. Whatever you're putting out there, is this sustainable? Is it user-friendly? Because you can put out a product, but if the product is not one that people can apply, then they will not use it. So they all we need to be strategic in the way we think and the way we deploy AI so that once we do it, it will be usable. Now, if it's not usable, we need you, nobody will adapt it because it's coming at a time where there's resistance. Some people believe that their jobs are they're going to lose their jobs. And in every innovation, there are people who will never adopt. They are the lawyers. The innovators will start with a proportional 2.5. By the time it gets to the late majority, probably around 84%. You cannot go beyond 84%. But how you get at 84% is very important and you need very strategic in the way you go about these things. One important thing that we also need to look at is the issue of policy. Because from the research that we did, one of the things that came up is the fear. People are thinking of issues of trust, issues of risk. Now, how do we ensure that we have the right policies that will create trust that will reduce the risk that we anticipate? Once we combine these and we strategy the way we do this, I believe that it will be very um easy to integrate AI and adopt AI in our set of setups in five questions.

SPEAKER_02 4:14

Thank you for that. Um similar question to you, Professor Ruji. What role should traditional knowledge systems play in shaping sort of the AI frameworks and higher education in Africa?

SPEAKER_03 4:25

I think that's um flex about data. And I'll talk, I'll say data, data, data. Because if you have data from a different context, let's give it garbage out. Whatever you put in is what you get as feedback from. So let's say you're talking about Ghana, and the data you're using is data that you're probably getting from them. Your references will be will be faulty. The information might be about Ghana, but your references will not be good enough. So we need to ensure that we have the right data. We need to ensure that we build the right human capacity so that the right people will develop the uh AI tools that are contextual. We need to look at the issues of funding. I think most of the time we look at getting money from somewhere to develop things for ourselves. Can we begin to look at our governments setting aside funds to develop these tools for ourselves? In fact, we can probably contextualize these technologies. If they are being sponsored by somebody out there, that person's interest will arrive yours. So I think we need to look at funding, we need to look at data, we need to look at building capacity on the continent for ourselves so that we can ensure that whatever we're developing is something that is fit for purpose, fit for purpose, and it's something that is adding value to whatever we're trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 5:59

And a quick look at the market. Local investors are optimistic ahead of finance minister Enno Kodong Gwane's Wednesday budget speech, expecting that elevated commodity prices will support ongoing fiscal consolidation and public debt stabilization. In the meantime, markets are seeking more clarity on economic reforms aimed at stimulating growth, particularly following President's Real Mapuz's commitment to create jobs and infrastructure development during his state of the nation address. And a quick look at the other story is Nigeria's government has said to receive a greater share of the revenues generated from oil and gas exploration and production in the country following a presidential directive to limit fees managed by the national oil company. It is the latest move by Africa's top crude producer to boost its coffers and come and come to just a year ahead of the presidential elections. President Boletinu's executive order includes preventing NNPC from collecting a 30% management fee on oil and gas revenues. The new order will increase money available to state governments for fiscal projects, and its proximity to an electron year will limit pushback from some of those who might otherwise have resisted hard. Ethiopia has launched a new artificial intelligence innovation hub in Addis Ababa. The Deputy Prime Minister Tames Oguin Tirune announced the opening of the AI Uniport, a joint initiative of the Ethiopian Artificial Intelligence Institute, the United Nations Development Program in partnership with Timbuktu initiative. The hub is intended to support AI research, innovation, and skills development. Although details about its capacity have not been made public. Two weeks ago, the Prime Minister Abi Ahmed said Ethiopia would open an AI university within a year. Whether newly launched center is associated with that announcement. Thank you for always waking up with us. Good morning, Africa's report at the K Financial. If you have suggestions and you just want to check out my stories, visit the website at the Kfinancial.com. Don't forget to subscribe, you can find us on all social media platforms at the K Financial, and you can find me at all.