Bridging the Artificial Intelligence Knowledge and Skill Gaps in Africa: a Case of the 3rd Google Tensorflow Bootcamp and FEDGEN Mini-Workshop
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In transiting from one civilization to another, technology has played a vital and positive role.
In the 21 st century, one of the digital developments that is paving ways for human life
improvement is machine-assisted technology using Artificial Intelligence (AI). Artificial
Intelligence has successfully enhanced man’s capacity in solving complex problems and
processes. However, as developed nations continue to reap from the adoption of AI in
various fields of human endeavors, the continent of Africa has remained behind, especially
in AI-based skills and research. Various governments in developing nations have
encouraged the adoption of AI, especially in institutions of learning. However, theoretical
adoption without practical experience has remained an ineffective way of bridging the digital
divide. In this paper we present the outcome of a practical approach to bridging the AI
divide among students and researchers in Africa through funding support from the Google
TensorFlow College Outreach Award. A 3-day hybrid bootcamp was organized (11 th to 13 th December, 2023) using the Google funding in order to equip postgraduate students
and researchers with AI and collaborative research skills. A pre-survey method was
employed to ascertain the knowledge level of the bootcamp participants. From the presurveyed
feedback, training sessions on various AI domains were presented, and
participant equipped with practical AI skills using a deployed AI-based cloud programming
platform running on the private Federated Genomic Cloud (FEDGEN) infrastructure at
Covenant University. A post-survey feedback was used to ascertain the effectiveness of this
approach. A comparative analysis of the pre-survey and post-survey reveals a 70%
improvement of AI skills among participants. This shows that having continuous training
session for students and researchers is an effective method in closing the AI skills gap
between developed and developing nations.
Keywords
QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science