Imagine an old lady sitting outside her yard in a Nigerian village, being able to just cough and an app on her phone reveals to her what ailment she is suffering from and what drugs are available to buy or what medical doctors to call.
Now she doesn’t have to look for money to travel 5 hours to the city to ask this important question. If she doesn’t have such a phone, imagine it’s now the lucrative and important job of 5 community health workers in that village to host several healthcare apps for villagers and even city dwellers to cheaply and quickly get their disease diagnosed thereby creating jobs, saving money, improving the quality of life.
Can this be Africa’s future, where AI and other emerging technologies are used to imbue better living for the African people?
Alliance for Africa’s Intelligence believes very much in this reality and has shared a short video to inspire innovators across the continent to collaborate in building this future.
The continent is being held back by its many challenges across electricity, roads, internet, data, making it near impossible for current residents to envision any feasible path to salvation beyond miraculous turnaround in governance. But can there be a path where the people connect their resources, information and network to gradually turn things around themselves?
The video captures 3 startups working in domains that if implemented successfully, could empower millions of people to enjoy improved earnings and make better choices for their future.
Charles Onu of Ubenwa in Nigeria built a mobile tool to diagnose Asphyxia from the cries of a baby, potentially saving millions of lives around the world and creating jobs for anyone savvy enough to operate the app on a phone.
Peris and Rita of Farmdrive in Kenya along with many other startups in Africa collectively raised over $300M in 2018 to build systems that make it easier to trust small businesses with loans. These loans provide the lifeblood the businesses need to survive, grow and employ the ever-growing workforce of the continent.
Finally, Desmond of CompleteFarmer in Ghana currently processes up to $4M of farm-produce orders annually, as he employs modern analytics to determine the best locations to produce high yields for different crops, and better match demand and supply for CompleteFarmer’s ever-growing portfolio of farms. If done right perhaps, Africa won’t need to import over $130B of food by 2024.
