Lavina Ramkissoon, the African 'mother of AI': "In our countries, many innovations arise out of necessity."

Lavina Ramkissoon (Mauritius, 47) moves like a fish in water through the endless corridors of GITEX Africa , the region's largest technology fair, held last April in Marrakech. The African Union ambassador to the east, north, and south of the continent seems to know everyone: top executives of big tech , visionaries constantly brainstorming, designers of an African-style digital future.

Her job is to advise 27 African countries on projects with a common denominator: digital as a lever for development . She studied computer science in South Africa and completed her studies at Harvard with postgraduate degrees in business and Artificial Intelligence (AI). She explains that, a few years ago, a group of African women christened her AI Mom due to difficulties pronouncing her surname. She appropriated the nickname and has turned it into her personal brand. In Africa's digital ecosystems, Ramkissoon is now AImom .

The pseudonym also has a familial connection. Ramkissoon says that her two daughters began programming at age eight and that at 13 they won an IBM scholarship to study quantum computing, a field to which she was introduced and which fascinates her today, especially for its potential for venturing dystopian hypotheses in which machines take control. For Ramkissoon, technology in general and AI in particular are tools of massive expansion that humans must keep a tight rein on. Under control, digital technology, whether in its simplest or most ultra-complex forms, can be the engine of a great leap forward for Africa.

Question: How can AI help Africa develop?

Answer: In a thousand ways. I like to give examples that make this potential tangible. There's a boy in Uganda who, at 16, created an AI app so his grandmother could get more out of their family farm, with information about crops, harvests, and weather. It worked so well that other farmers in the area began using it as well, with excellent results. Innovations born of necessity abound in Africa.

Q. Is agriculture the sector that can benefit the most?

A. I would say second only to healthcare, where this technology can greatly help optimize scarce resources. In Zambia, they are completely digitizing their healthcare system to improve efficiency in access to facilities and medication dispensing, especially in rural areas.

Q. Are there structural problems that African countries need to address for technology to unleash its full potential?

A. In Africa and elsewhere, technology operates in expanded ecosystems and requires multidimensional approaches to get the most out of it. AI can help us save energy or reduce food waste. Imagine a system where we know the real-time supply of a type of grain, let's say wheat. Let's say Nigeria has a surplus and Ghana has a deficit. We could meet that need with maximum agility. But to do so, we would need to advance the free movement of goods and people. AI is a tool that allows us to expand, that improves us, but always with the human being holding the brush as the artist of their work, as the creative author.

Q. Can the hope for AI as a generator of high social impact serve as an incentive for African leaders to commit to digital transformation?

A. I hope so. It's certainly pushing us as a continent to reflect on how to use this new tool to maximize social benefits. It's an added motivation.

We must find a balance in our relationship with nature and not limit ourselves to inventing electric cars to reduce emissions or selling carbon credits to multinationals.

Q. Is there a risk that AI will blind us and cause us to discard less sophisticated but perhaps more effective technologies in certain contexts?

A. Mobile money comes to mind [financial transactions via SMS, very popular in sub-Saharan Africa], which emerged on the continent to overcome deficiencies in internet connectivity and has allowed money to flow more freely. It's a system that uses an infrastructure that we now consider almost rudimentary. It has made life much easier for millions of Africans who don't have a bank account or stable internet access.

Q. Is there a uniquely African approach to addressing the gender gap in technology studies and professions?

A. A recent UNESCO study stated that out of 100 African men skilled in Excel, 40 were African women. Much remains to be done. In the political sphere, progress has been notable. There are many female ministers in African governments, and female presidents are beginning to emerge, the most recent in Namibia [Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah, sworn in last March]. But this change must be grounded and extended to the general population, especially in the scientific and technological field. Perhaps a truly African approach could come from trusting young people [70% of the population in sub-Saharan Africa is under 30 ] as the basis for development on the continent: give a boy or girl a computer with an internet connection and expect the unexpected to happen.

Q. Are we being arrogant if we think that technology will be the solution to, for example, climate change, which is so devastating to Africa ?

A. These are almost existential questions, with pressing dilemmas: humanity depending on technology to solve its problems versus technology using us to evolve itself. Or another: humans becoming increasingly robotized, and AI seemingly becoming increasingly humanized. To avoid getting bogged down, we must return to a fundamental consideration of humans as optimistic and kind beings by nature. And we must not forget that we are in control and that climate dystopia is a choice. The paradox is that we have the technology to stop the destruction of the planet, but at the same time we consider ourselves to have lost the battle.

Q. Perhaps because of the profound systemic changes to our way of life that would be required to confront this threat head-on?

A. With all our virtues, we humans tend toward complacency or comfort, to think in the short term and that someone in the future will fix the mess we're creating now. We must find balance in our relationship with nature and not limit ourselves to inventing electric cars to reduce emissions or selling carbon credits to multinationals. Faced with a scenario of loss of control over the planet or the technology we've created, I insist on the human capacity to choose every day, every moment.