Artificial intelligence is what will take Africa’s digital revolution to the next level, Francis Mumbi a Digital Innovation Lead at Stanbic Zambia said in a sideline interview of the Aritificial Intelligence Summit in Cape Town. At a global level, we are seeing the application of AI in medicine, education, natural and physical sciences but most importantly in financial service provision in driving financial inclusion.
The potential AI sits with in Africa is delivering better product services to customers across a broad spectrum of demographics delivering access to financial products and services in the area of credit. If you are going to beat scale, you need powerful AI application for you to be able to determine and apply credit scoring tools to individuals that have never accessed credit before. In the area of insurance, to asses risk and to determine who will deserve cover in agriculture or trade plus other sectors driving the African continents economy, Mumbi narrated.
Asked how AI will impact traditional workforce, Mumbi said AI will cause dislocations and rearrangements of workforce within the structures of the organisations. This he said is is because AI brings with it automation and that processes which were done by human hands will have to be delegated to machines.
So as industry leaders we have to see how best we will prepare our workforce for the future by investing in training skills and educational programs to develop talent pools that will works side by side AI colleagues to deliver to our customers.
For an industry about to take off, early investors will lead the market in terms of defining how best to employ this technology in their businesses. Early access to markets which turn out to be profitable segments within the sectors will begin to dominate those areas of the industries, Mumbi said.
****Edited by Tionge Mbali**** written by Kondwani Phiri******