Digital Press Briefing: Global Inclusivity and AI – Africa (GIAA) Conference
Dr. Seth Center, Acting Special EnvoyOffice of the Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology
Joy Basu, Deputy Assistant SecretaryBureau of African Affairs
MODERATOR: Good afternoon to everyone from the U.S. Department of State’s Africa Regional Media Hub. I welcome our participants logging in from across the continent and thank all of you for joining us. Today, we are very pleased to be joined by Dr. Seth Center, Acting Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology, and Joy Basu, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and today they will review the September 10-11 Global Inclusivity and AI: Africa Conference in Lagos, Nigeria, and discuss progress made towards the responsible development and deployment of AI technologies in Africa.
We will begin today’s briefing with opening remarks from Acting Special Envoy Dr. Seth Center and Deputy Assistant Secretary Joy Basu, then we will turn to your questions. We will try to get to as many of them as we can during the briefing.
With that, I will turn it over to Acting Special Envoy Dr. Center and DAS Basu for opening remarks.
DR CENTER: Perfect. Thanks so much, everybody, for joining us. We really wanted to just spend a few minutes today talking about how the United States is partnering with Africa on an approach to global inclusivity and artificial intelligence to make sure that as all of us develop this new technology in ways that are safe, secure, and trustworthy, we ensure that we’re mitigating the risks and seizing the opportunities together.
Our event that we co-hosted with the Nigerian Government in Lagos was incredibly successful. Nearly 400 leaders from 13 countries across the African continent participated. Our goal, fundamentally, was to ensure that we’re collaborating on developing the AI governance frameworks necessary to enable access and use of artificial intelligence; to continue to support initiatives that expand access to AI tools and education in Nigeria, the region, and across the continent; and then of course to explore the kind of application of AI for the most relevant use cases in sectors like agriculture and health that can help drive economies and prosperity. And of course we wanted to do this in partnership with many of the entrepreneurs and private sector actors that are going to really bring this technology into our houses, into our governments, and into our lives.
So thanks so much for joining us. Joy, over to you.
DAS BASU: Thank you, Seth, and thank you all for joining us today. The media is a critical part of the future of technology, and particularly the uses of AI and the way that AI will interact with your industry and all of your audiences is very important.
The only thing I would add to what Dr. Center said is that this is a conversation where we are learning together with our African partners and with our partners around the world, and so we were so grateful to be able to have the conversation in Lagos and to be joined by so many colleagues.
Of course, as Dr. Center said, this is really an area where innovation will be led by industry, but there’s an important role for government; there’s an important role for civil society; and as I said at the top, there’s an important role for you guys, the journalists. So thank you very much for your time and for your thoughtfulness and diligence to this issue, and we’re really looking forward to your questions.
MODERATOR: Thank you. Thank you, Acting Special Envoy Dr. Center and DAS Basu. We will now begin the question-and-answer portion of today’s briefing. We ask that you limit yourself to one question only related to the topic of today’s briefing, which is the Global Inclusivity and AI: Africa Conference in Lagos, Nigeria, and the responsible development and deployment of AI technologies in Africa.
Our first question goes to Ms. Yanet Fantaye from New Business, Ethiopia, and they ask: “Can you please reflect on the significance of the conference and any major expected outcomes?”
DR CENTER: Terrific. Joy, if you don’t mind, I’ll take a first stab and then hand over to you.
DAS BASU: Please do, thank you.
DR CENTER: Great. So first and foremost, I think all of us recognize that AI is a unique global technology and we’re in the midst of an intense period of focus already being driven by innovators – the private sector startups and researchers. And we now have this question of, what are we going to do together to shape the AI future to benefit our societies and strengthen our respective democracies and increase prosperity? And I think all of us recognize that this inflection point has two pieces to it.
The first is a recognition that fundamentally, whether at a regional level or a global level, we are not on track to achieve what all of us believe are the most important components of the global Sustainable Development Goals, and we have an opportunity to use this new technology and this technology revolution to accelerate many of the goals – perhaps up to 80 percent. And what was most striking in terms of the conversations that we had in this conference, and I think a real launchpad for action, is the excitement and optimism around the opportunity to use AI on top of a larger digital revolution to accelerate progress on all of these goals.
So what we hope to do fundamentally in bringing together a regional conversation, number one, was to listen, as DAS Basu said, to the kinds of priorities that are coming up from startups, from entrepreneurs, from governments in the region; number two, make sure that we’re connecting those startups and entrepreneurs to a larger ecosystem of private sector actors who can really provide launchpads; and then number three, I think, take the governance conversation to the next level. What’s significant is many of the countries in Africa are developing their own respective national AI strategies right now. There’s an intense focus at the continental level now that there’s an AU AI strategy to try and create interoperable frameworks, aligned governance frameworks that will allow us to innovate.
And so what we hoped to do out of this conference and achieve in this conference was to get agreement that we want to have governance frameworks that work across boundaries; that we want to make sure that we understand the kinds of tools, the kinds of access that companies and startups need in the region; and then we also want to make sure that our private sector actors coming out of other parts of the world are focused on the unique problems and unique priorities in the region.
DAS BASU: Okay, thank you, Dr. Center. The only thing I would add to that is, for me, how valuable it was to be able to listen to our African partners and to listen to leaders from across the continent talk about the opportunities in Africa for the application of AI to the industries and examples that Dr. Center delineated. And for me, I’m again reminded about the importance of having African voices at the table in these important global conversations, and it’s been a true priority of the Biden administration in every aspect of our Africa work and our Africa strategy and the work we do, for example, at the G20 and at the UN. And this was, I think, a really pertinent example of that.
We are in a rare moment, I think, in human history where you have the chance to see a really powerful technology coming, and also learn from the past in a way that allows us to think thoughtfully about the application of this technology. So we asked a lot of questions about, well, how will we be able to use AI to really bridge inequities, to mitigate biases, and to direct the powerful technology – this powerful technology towards our most pressing societal challenges as enumerated in the SDGs, the Sustainable Development Goals? I think if we’re not careful with technologies like this, an artificial technology can really magnify those biases and the historical inequities. And it’s really special to be able to be at a moment where we recognize that and are having inclusive conversation about what we can all do together.
And of course, with any good conversation, I was impressed by not only the questions that were asked but the questions that those continue. And so this is a continuing conversation and I know – I think one outcome of this conference is that there will be more conversations and more dialogue, which in and of itself is a success, particularly when it comes to a technology that can affect so many of our lives around the world, and directing that work towards good I think is an exciting opportunity to take forward.
MODERATOR: Thank you. We’ll go to the next question, and the next question comes from Mr. Samson Akintaro from Nairametrics in Nigeria, and they ask: “The Nigerian tech community seems not to be impressed by the announcement of a 100 million naira AI fund by the Nigerian Government in partnership with Google. Their grouse is that the fund is quite insignificant, about 60,000 U.S. dollars, given how cost-intensive it is to build AI tools. Can you tell us what the plan is for this fund, and if there would be any injection of more funds subsequently?”
DAS BASU: I appreciate that question, and would direct you towards Google and the Government of Nigeria for more information there. I don’t want to speak on their behalf.
For my part, I am happy to see this start, and I hope we see more such funds going forward. Seth, is there anything you would add?
DR CENTER: I would just say at a foundational level, I think all of us recognize as governments that we have an important catalyzing role to play in the AI revolution. Governments have an important role in shaping the rules of the road, the governance frameworks in focusing on critical areas. And so programs that build public-private partnerships to develop and focus attention on the centrality of skills training and creating AI-ready societies are going to be a central foundation for building all of the ecosystem that one needs in any context to build successful AI systems that are going to solve real and concrete problems.
And so I think the skills training pillar is really central. I think government catalytic roles are critical. I think all of us recognize that the private sector needs to play a huge role in actually delivering a lot of this skills training.
I would say the other piece of this, of course, is the scale and requirements around compute access. And I think this is where, when we think about the kinds of large-scale projects, large-scale needs that all governments are going to need to contemplate for their societies where public-private partnership is going to be so critical as well.
And so irrespective, as DAS Basu said, about the specific context of this project, I think fundamentally we have to continue to drive public-private partnerships around skills training and compute access and compute infrastructure.
MODERATOR: Thank you. We now turn it over to Carmen, the global health reporter from Politico, who would like to ask a live question.
QUESTION: Hi. Thank you so much for the opportunity. I had a question about whether there were any discussions at the conference about the potential application of AI in response to health care challenges that some African countries are facing, and if you can – and if so, if you can talk a bit more about that. Thank you.
DAS BASU: I can take – Carmen, thank you so much for that question, and I can take a first answer at it. Yes, we actually had a dedicated breakout session on three sectors in particular: agriculture, education, and health care. And the health care conversation was really about all the potential to both lower cost of care across the continent, but also to improve access, and how do we direct these technologies to be able to make it easier and more cost-effective to treat both the chronic illnesses that so many of our constituents face across the country, but also the more – diagnosing more quote-unquote “non-communicable diseases” and making sure that we’re learning from the best practices around the world to make those diagnoses most efficient.
And so I think there was a very rich conversation on health care that was really exciting to see and to hear and to be a part of. You’re already seeing companies across the continent who are starting to deploy this. I think it’s particularly relevant in West Africa, where we see so many health care workers and experts, where you see the need for more health care workers and experts. Obviously, many depart West Africa and that’s a challenge of its own. And so while we have to think about how to mitigate those challenges, the opportunity for AI to make sure that we’re making the most of that health care talent to – on the continent I think is really important, and was a part of the conversation that we had.
I hope that’s helpful, Carmen, and Dr. Center, please jump in if anything else on that sector that you witnessed.
DR CENTER: Yeah, Carmen, thanks for a live question. It’s nice to interact with a – it’s nice to interact live. I think Dr. Basu hit the key point, which is, number one, I think all of us have to have optimistic but realistic sense of what technology can achieve in relationship to these large sectoral problems. But even with that cautionary message, I think the reality is that when we talk about optimization, accessibility, decentralization, an increased efficiency, AI is going to provide huge, huge opportunities to transform a sector like health in ways that I think are going to enable an enormous improvement in how people access healthcare, interact with doctors, how remote access to health information is going to be improved, and really, as Dr. Basu said also, improve in incredible and unique ways diagnostics in incredibly, incredibly compressed timeframes.
So I think that’s why the excitement is there. Obviously, building the enabling infrastructure has to be a part of this. And then, of course, ensuring that basic connectivity, particularly to bridge the rural-urban divide as a part of this solution as well, has to be incorporated as part of a much larger holistic approach.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Dr. Center. On your point of infrastructure, we have a question from Loni from Bloomberg, and they ask: “How would AI be hosted with very limited data center capacity in Africa at the moment?”
DAS BASU: Seth, do you want to take the first crack at this?
DR CENTER: Yeah, please, please.
DAS BASU: Sorry, go ahead.
DR CENTER: Please go ahead.
DAS BASU: Oh, I was going to say Seth will have the more technical expertise on the specific aspect of the data centers, but I will say there was a long conversation about the importance of the U.S. Government partnering with African Governments on infrastructure. And we had colleagues from our various agencies who focus on infrastructure.
As many of you on this call know, one of the President’s initiatives has been the Digital Transformation with Africa, DTA, and one of the key pillars of that – of the three is investing in infrastructure both alongside African Governments and the private sector but also really thinking about the question of equity and how do you make sure that we’re putting infrastructure in the right place in an efficient way to increase access, but doing so in a way that balances global needs with the opportunity in Africa.
So with that, let me hand it over to Dr. Center.
DR CENTER: I think this is really the artificial intelligence question of the year, which is, how do we – how do we meet the infrastructure needs to develop AI that is contextually sensitive, linguistically attuned, that meets the needs of a particular context at a regional or local or national level given what we see particularly in the news of really some extraordinary costs and investments going into large scale, particularly frontier AI training?
I think the way really that we need to think about this is there is going to be an extraordinary number of pathways to access the benefits of particular AI applications. For instance, there are interesting and intriguing ways in which open source AI is being tuned and trained and refined on very small computing infrastructure to solve particular problems at a local or national level, which I think is a real opportunity.
Another potential way that we can start to think about the compute divide is to recognize that remote access to large-scale infrastructure – in other words, through cloud-based access – is an opportunity to tailor and tune AI applications in ways which a particular company or country would not have to make the massive investment that maybe some of the large hyperscalers are making but still be able to benefit from that compute for specific projects. So I think we need to think about this in terms of a diversity of pathways to AI access, and then also a diversity of ways in which the actual infrastructure needs to be accessed.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Dr. Center. A follow-up question from that is: “What are the investments that have been decided on in AI to date, both by the U.S. and U.S. private companies?”
Dr. Center?
DR CENTER: So that’s quite a broad – a broad question. I would say the public announcements obviously around the very most advanced frontier systems certainly are extraordinarily ambitious. I think, as I just said, though, there’s a recognition that there’s going to be tremendously powerful AI applications that can be built off of much smaller compute resources and compute infrastructure that are going to achieve really, really exquisite results in different sectors that creates, I think, really at this unique moment – and really what we started out on was a recognition that we’re at a unique moment in which a series of technological pathways for AI are uncertain.
I think we’re seeing increasingly the likelihood that we’re going to get some of what we want through optimization, efficiency, decentralization of access and utilization through much, much less computing power than I think we initially imagined, and that opens up a whole new set of opportunities to train and run inference for AI systems on much smaller infrastructure than I think some of the public discussion has suggested.
MODERATOR: Thank you. DAS Basu, do you have anything to add there?
DAS BASU: Nothing to add, thank you.
MODERATOR: Thank you. The next question goes, “How does the U.S. plan to compete with Asian powers, in particular China, in AI investments in Africa?”
DR CENTER: So I would say the United States goal fundamentally in its approach to international AI has to be seen in terms of making sure that we have a common approach in the world to developing safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence that meets the opportunities and ambitions to focus on the Sustainable Development Goals. We see this really fundamentally as a common global enterprise. We think it’s captured fundamentally in a global consensus that the United States was happy to help participate in at the United Nations around a resolution which achieved not only global consensus, but 123 co-sponsors around a focus on agreeing that we have the right governance framework; we must have – to solve the problem of connectivity, AI divides, and ensure that the entire framework of getting societies AI-ready from skills training to infrastructure access to safe and secure applications has to be achieved. And so we’re quite optimistic that really this is seen as a global opportunity and a global challenge.
DAS BASU: Thank you. I would just add two things to that. One, I would reaffirm that whether it’s in this conference or the other sectors in which we work with our African partners, our Africa policy is about Africa, and we’re seeking to really co-create the right solutions with our African partners that really benefit American people and African people. And I think there’s a leadership role for around the world, and so that’s really what we’re focused on.
I think this conference really elevated the opportunities that we have together to create that foundation in a way that is rights-respecting and that really honors the sort of human rights and kind of aspirations of our citizens that we have worked together for, sometimes imperfectly in a non-technological world, making sure that we’re doing better in a world with AI. And so, again, this was a conference where we get to work about co-creating that together with our African partners and with so many other partners around the world that the United States has been collaborating with in having this conversation. But no one country will have the answers, and that’s why I’m so grateful to Dr. Center and his team and everyone who’s been having this AI conversation about how we can make sure it’s inclusive and respecting all of our values.
MODERATOR: Thank you so much, DAS Basu. I think we have time for one last question, and the last question goes to your point around human rights. “What are the ethical concerns surrounding the use of AI in Africa, and how were these concerns addressed during the conference?”
DAS BASU: That was a – as Dr. Center said in his opening remarks, the conversation around mitigating risks, I think, as well as seizing opportunities, was threaded throughout the two-day conference. And I think many of us know the risks that are both applicable in Africa but also in the United States. There’s a lot of humility we have about understanding that none of us can control these risks alone and that it will really be a global conversation. But I think you have risks that were identified in the governance base, particularly in the security sector. You also have a number of risks particularly around elections. This is a year where so many countries are voting, including our own, and we all have to be aware of those risks.
Regardless of the ways in which the risks manifest, I think one key mitigating solution that was discussed is ensuring that our populations are AI-equipped and are AI-ready and that they have not only the skills to take advantage of an AI workforce, but they have the critical thinking skills to be able to assess truth from fiction and disinformation and understand what those – what those risks are and the way that they interact with AI. And so there’s a pretty robust conversation throughout the conference about these various concerns as well as the more macro concern about the lack of certain kinds of data and certain languages and making sure we’re building these models in ways that are actually inclusive. And those conversations will have to continue; we’ll have to with any technology continue to be vigilant.
But at the end of the day, the best defense we have is between the two ears of all our citizens and in – and our citizens’ heads. And that is why the United States has invested so much over the last few decades and will continue to in the future in investing in African people, investing in education, investing in their access so that they can not only be protected against some of the harms that come but also bring their brilliance and their brainpower and their innovation to make sure that AI is oriented in the most positive way.
I will end there and turn it over to Dr. Center.
DR CENTER: I think that was really brilliant. I have nothing to add.
MODERATOR: Thank you, Acting Special Envoy Dr. Center, Deputy Assistant Secretary Basu, for joining us today on this call. And while that concludes today’s briefing, I want to thank Dr. Center, Acting Special Envoy for Critical and Emerging Technology, and Joy Basu, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, for joining us. Thank you to all the journalists for participating. A recording and transcript of today’s briefing will be distributed to participating journalists as soon as we can produce them. If you have any questions about today’s briefing, you may contact the Africa Regional Media Hub at AFMediaHub@state.gov. I would also like to invite everyone to follow us on X at our handle @AfricaMediaHub. Thank you.
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