18
BUSINESS DAY
COMPANIES & MARKETS
Google to open Africa’ s first Artificial Intelligence centre in Ghana
OLALEKAN IPELE
Google has announced plans to open Africa’ s first Artificial Intelligence( AI) centre in Accra, Ghana later this year.
According to Google, people across Africa do amazing things with the internet and technology for themselves, their communities and the world.
Interests in machine learning research across the continent have increased in recent times and this must have resulted in the decision of the tech giant to designate Africa for one of its AI research centres.
Events like Data Science Africa 2017 in Tanzania, the 2017 Deep Learning Indaba event in South Africa, and follow-on IndabaX events in 2018 in multiple countries across the continent have shown an incredible and continuing growth of the computer science research community in Africa.
The choice of Ghana as the hub for the centre is however generating mixed reactions in Nigeria, Africa’ s biggest economy and the most populated country on the continent with many concerned that poor infrastructure, weak educational system, insecurity and difficulty in doing business may have cumulated in the neglect of the country.
Taiwo Kola Ogunlade, Google’ s communications and public affairs manager, Anglophone West Africa told BusinessDay via Email that“ Ghana has a strong set of local universities, as well as an office of the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences”
“ Although the center will be based in Ghana, we are quite focused more widely at Africa as a location where we want to invest in new areas of interest. There are many talented researchers working on AI in Africa now and it’ s our goal to collaborate with them more closely through this new AI centre in Accra” Ogundele concluded.
Lucy James, associate consultant with Control Risks’ Africa team said“ Ghana likely appealed to Google because of the quality of its education system and other feeder institutions”
“ The search company is focused on drawing in local talent and there’ s no shortage of that in Ghana,” James concluded.
Google has had various offices in Africa over the past 10 years and the company is excited to be a part of growing technology transformation on the continent.
According to Google, ultimately 10 million Africans will benefit from its many digital skills training program with 2 million people having already completed the course.
The company is supporting 100,000 developers and over 60 tech start-ups through Launchpad Accelerator Africa and is also adapting products to make it easy for people to discover the best of the internet, even on low-RAM smartphones or unstable network connections.
According to Jeff Dean, senior fellow, Google AI,“ We’ re committed to collaborating with local universities and research centers, as well as working with policy makers on the potential uses of AI in Africa”
AI has great potential to positively impact the world, and more so if the world is well represented in the development of new AI technologies. So it is important that the world should be well represented in the development of AI.
The new AI center in Accra joins the list of other locations where Google is focusing on AI, including Paris, Zurich, Tokyo, Beijing, Montreal, Toronto, Seattle, Cambridge / Boston, Tel Aviv / Haifa, New York, and the company’ s Mountain View / San Francisco headquarters.
Nigeria’ s largest system integration company, CWG Plc has been confirmed as one of the companies licensed by the Nigerian Electricity Regulatory Commission( NERC) to participate in the procurement of prepaid meters in the Nigerian Electricity Supply Industry( NESI).
CWG announced the receipt of the license in Lagos through a statement by its Group Head, Brand & Marketing Communications, Anthonia Ehanmo.
According to the statement, CWG will proceed to obtain Meter Asset Provider Permit from the NERC after entering into Metering Service
C002D5556
CWG receives Federal Government’ s license to install prepaid meters
Agreement with Electricity Distribution Companies. The Meter Asset Provider Permit allows CWG and other licensees to finance, procure, install, repair and even replace electricity meters according to the MAP Regulations 2018.
CWG Plc, as part of efforts to address power challenges in Nigeria, initiated and designed a‘ Smart Metering Solution’ which works in the form of a connected mobile app for electricity consumers – both the Maximum Demand Customers( MDCs) and the Non-maximum Demand Customers( NDCs).
The Smart Meter, according to CWG is part of a larger plan for the Company’ s
Monday 18 June 2018
Smart Utilities platform that is keyed into Government’ s smart initiatives, noting that the solution makes it possible for the Power Distribution companies to detect power theft, monitor and measure usage for improved power efficiencies.
The solution is designed in such a way that it alerts the power companies with the precise location where the theft is occurring in near real time, not more than three minutes after it happens, without requiring large technology equipment or complex and expensive algorithms to decipher them. This is another innovation out of the stables of CWG Plc.
L-R: Oscar Onyema, chief executive officer, Nigerian Stock Exchange; Uche Ajene, managing consultant, QuadrantMSL; and Sonnie Ayere, president, Association of Issuing Houses of Nigeria( AIHN) at the first inaugural dinner of AIHN in Lagos recently.