Artificial intelligence (AI) is the “defining technology of our time” and could help to solve some of Africa’s most pressing challenges, says Lillian Barnard, president of Microsoft Africa.
“We are excited and optimistic, because it brings hope to Africa. In health, education, sustainability and more, it will help to solve challenges,” she told a Microsoft event, “A new era with AI”, in Sandton this week.
“We believe this technology can give us an upward trajectory when it comes to the African economy. Analysts predict we can increase the African economy by 50% if we capture just 10% of the global AI market.”
Barnard said there is huge potential for AI in Africa.
“AI is changing things every day, and will shape everything we do. It is truly the most defining technology of our time.”
The continent is at the same “inflection point” as the rest of the world because AI technology is “changing fast and large language models [LLMs] are accelerating transformation”.
But, she added, Africa still has significant challenges. “We have high levels of unemployment, but are blessed with a youthful population. We have a lack of connectivity and lack of digital or tech skills.”
We believe this technology can give us an upward trajectory when it comes to the African economy
— Lillian Barnard
To address this, Kalane Rampai, MD of Microsoft South Africa, announced an AI skills training programme with Youth Employment Service (YES) for 300,000 young people.
Barnard said: “Despite these challenges we see investment in cloud technology across the continent, and organisations infuse these technologies into their business processes.”
Legal Interact, which provides technology to the legal industry, uses AI to scan agreements and has developed an AI chatbot for a free WhatsApp service called My AI Lawyer. It is “literally using generative AI to democratise legal support”, said Barnard. In September alone it handled 50,000 queries.
The eThekwini municipality is using AI to help minimise “water losses, provide better quality water and ensure the general availability of water”.
Investec has developed its own generative AI service called ZebraGPT for its 9,000 employees, while MultiChoice is using AI for translation and generating subtitles, cutting the time required for the task by 30% and achieving 80% accuracy.
“We know we are on the cusp of the next revolution that will change and shape the outlook of the continent for everyone,” said Barnard. “It’s the opportunity of a lifetime. We know AI transformation, the next wave of innovation, is here.”
Indeed, the AI race is on.
Microsoft presciently invested $1bn in OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT. When ChatGPT took the world by storm a year ago, Microsoft put in another $10bn to raise its stake to 50%. OpenAI’s technology underpins Microsoft’s Copilot.
Left in the marketing dust, Google has rushed to catch up — declaring a “code red” response to ChatGPT. Last year it invested $300m in AI start-up Anthropic, which makes an AI service called Claude. In September Amazon, whose Alexa voice assistant was an early AI service, invested $4bn in Anthropic.
Another AI start-up, Inflection AI, raised $1.3bn from, among others, Microsoft and Nvidia.
Microsoft has evolved into a cloud-focused behemoth, folding its once dominant Windows business into the Azure cloud division. This alone gives you a sense of how much it has changed in the past decade.
Last month it was given the go-ahead by UK competition authorities to finalise its $69bn acquisition of Activision Blizzard, which makes the wildly successful Call of Duty and World of Warcraft games.
Having evolved into a cloud player second only to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft is baking Copilot into all its offerings. Copilot offers a more focused service than ChatGPT, which uses LLMs derived from the world wide web.
“We talk about Copilot and not autopilot,” said Barnard. “It is helping build apps much faster, creating presentations, publishing documents.”
Copilot means Microsoft has had to add more processing power to its data centres while also trying to address climate concerns by cutting energy consumption.
Azure data centres were launched in South Africa in 2019 and are the second-fastest growing in the world, says Mark Chaban, Microsoft’s chief technology officer for Europe, Middle East and Africa.
Microsoft is one of the few “hyperscalers” that provide vast networks of data centres with fast connections between them. Chaban says Microsoft will build 120 data centres this year, or a new one every three days. “How do you do this sustainably?” he asks.
The company’s research division has found some simple solutions (such as allowing natural airflow to cool down racks of servers, then adding water for the breeze to pass through to cool it down further), and more ambitious ones — like submerging entire data centres in the sea off Scotland.
Another approach is to immerse the motherboard in a liquid nonconductive coolant, which reduces the temperature and increases the servers’ performance.
As Barnard said: “We are in the next wave of AI transformation.”
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