Google opens Africa's first AI research center in Accra

Company News of Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Source: www.ghanaweb.com

2019-04-10

An American multinational, Google, opened its Artificial Intelligence (AI) research center in Accra, Ghana on Wednesday (April 10th).

The AI ​​center, the first open in Africa, will bring together researchers and machine learning engineers in Accra, to facilitate local development of AI.

Moustapha Cisse, director of Google AI Accra, told the media that the creation of the AI ​​Research Center in Accra aimed to address the growing interest in research on machine learning. in Africa.

According to him, Google will work with universities, research organizations and local decision-makers to deploy AI to solve health, agriculture, education and other issues. to make things easy and accessible.

"We will work and collaborate with institutions across the continent; the team itself is very international; there are already about 10 people coming from more than 12 different countries; Africans and non-Africans too, so we look forward to working with African institutions. Our goal is to push the boundaries of this science to have a scientific impact, but we also hope, through the collaboration of different institutions working on local challenges, to have an impact on our field by applying the technology of agriculture to health and health. to other areas where it can be too, "he said.

Accra now joins the list of Google Artificial Intelligence Centers, including Paris, Zurich, Tokyo, Beijing, Montreal, Toronto, Seattle, Cambridge / Boston, Tel Aviv / Haifa, New York and San Franciso.

Meet the Google artificial intelligence team in Ghana

A team of 10 people from various countries, made up of software engineers and scientific researchers from Senegal, Uganda, United States, Israel, Nigeria, India, and other countries. Ireland, Canada, the United Kingdom and Lesotho have joined their counterparts in Ghana to work at the center and apply their knowledge in artificial intelligence. to solve the problems of Africa.

Some members of the team who spoke at the event expressed their enthusiasm for the idea of ​​coming to Ghana by insisting on the need to use their knowledge base on AI to help African institutions in development.

According to them, they will use AI to improve the health of people and plants, but will also use it as an opportunity to improve access to information.