AI4D Africa & AI4COVID with IDRC

Major results of the AI4D for Africa programme during the past year include the following: In terms of informing African AI Policy and Regulation, AI4D for Africa has contributed to the progress that have been made by African researchers and programme partners, in amplifying their voice. Particularly, they have contributed in policy processes such as the following: - The lead of the Ghanaian Responsible AI Laboratory (RAIL) was invited by the Data Protection Commission of the Ministry of Communications and Digitalization to a high-level stakeholder workshop to validate and finalize Ghanas National AI Strategy. - Programme partner CITADEL, a multidisciplinary lab in Burkina Faso, has been requested by Burkina Fasos Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Resources, and Fisheries Resources to join a technical monitoring committee in charge of the follow-up on the Digitization of Animal Identification and Mobility. - The policy network in Francophone Africa, has signed a partnership agreement with a network of Senegalese parliamentarians to collaborate on a Francophone policy research network to advance responsible and inclusive AI in the region. They kicked off this partnership with a one-day training workshop with Senegalese parliamentarians from the National Assemblys Commission on Culture and Communication to better understand the key issues of AI. Among the results across the programme's four pillars (policy, capacity building and innovation) that the IDRC has reported are the following: In terms of policy, AI4D program partners have been involved in the drafting and development of the African Union's AI Continental Strategy, the Nigerian National AI Strategy, and the South Africa National AI Strategy. They have also participated in regional reflections on AI and data governance, the African Commission on Human and Peoples Rights Working Group on Human and Peoples Rights and AI, Robotics and other New and Emerging Technologies, and discussions on Kenya's National AI Strategy. In terms of capacity building, the African Centre for Technology Studies (ACTS) has supported research on AI and machine learning undertaken by 56 beneficiaries (22 MSc students, 24 PhD scholars, and 10 ECAs) from 22 African public universities and 18 African countries, generating 51 publications and the participation in 64 national, regional and international policy engagements and conferences. Moreover, it has established a network of 75 AI scholars (the beneficiaries and their supervisors). Meanwhile, the Centre dExcellence Interdisciplinaire en Intelligence Artificielle pour le Développement (CITADEL) has launched a first Masters degree program in AI in Burkina Faso; In terms of innovation, a number of results are recorded. For example: - Subgrantees of the Hub for Artificial Intelligence in Maternal, Sexual and Reproductive Health have built four chatbots, four predictive analytic tools and two image analysis algorithms. - Grantees of the African Technology Policy Studies have developed AI innovations in African agriculture and food systems, which includes an artificial intelligence tools and applications to enhance the economic viability of a yellow pepper grown in Nigeria. - The CITADEL multidisciplinary lab in Burkina Faso, has been working with the Burkinabé government to develop a speech-to-text AI tool that helps low literacy citizens access government services. In 2024 a new phase of the programme was launched, with support from FCDO and USAID. This phase expands the programme and sustains it until 2029. However, although the new phase is not supported directly with Sida funding, the report notes that "Sidas support has allowed for substantial development of the AI4D program, and enabled leveraging of additional funds to further strengthen the African AI ecosystem. In November 2023, the UKs Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) committed CAD 70 million to support a second phase of the AI4D program, building on the learnings from the first phase of the program, consultations, scoping and baseline work".

AI4D Africa The program Artificial Intelligence for Development (AI4D) Africa aims to build and support policy, research capacity, and innovations to spur responsible artificial intelligence (AI) development in Africa. Responsible AI strives to be inclusive, rights-based and sustainable. The future of AI on the African continent, however, is not yet written, and the policies and practices put in place now will greatly shape the flow of benefits and harms from AI. AI4D will strengthen and promote scientific multidisciplinary AI research in primarily low-income countries in Africa; strengthen low-income countries own research AI capacity; and support sustainable innovation and research systems in low-income countries in Africa with the aim of reaching a critical mass of highly qualified AI researchers. AI4D will strengthen policies and regulation for AI to be ethical and rights based and have a regulatory framework for the African context that can both stimulate innovation and minimize risks (for example, for human rights). The program will stimulate locally-run applications in the public interest for poverty reduction. Fuelled by the increasing availability of computational power, improved connectivity, and data, AI applications offer interesting possibilities for promoting economic growth through spurring new start ups, improving food systems, enabling higher quality education systems and tackling pressing health and climate challenges in Africa. The AI4D initiative will target funding towards achievement of the following three specific objectives: -Increasing evidence-informed AI policy and regulations that support responsible AI development at sub-national, national, regional levels; -Building the talent and capacity that supports the local design, development, and deployment of responsible AI4D innovations at the appropriate scale; -Catalysing the responsible development and scaling of AI innovations that solve development challenges. AI4COVID The goal of the AI4COVID Global South Program is to support multidisciplinary research to develop and scale responsible (inclusive, rights-based, ethical, and sustainable), evidence-based artificial intelligence (AI) and data science approaches that support COVID-19 response and recovery in low- and middle-income countries. The program will advance ethical research and responsible AI innovation, pay special attention to potential harms, and advance data science and AI approaches that are gender responsive, culturally appropriate, community specific, and based on local needs and contexts. The projects selected within the program should respond to the COVID challenge in a variety of ways. They should support the development of core infrastructure for data sharing, quality decision making, and responsible, multi-disciplinary approaches to COVID response based on data, evidence, and new modelling techniques. These include: - Adapting epidemiological and machine learning models to developing country contexts to support reliable and effective decision making; - Testing novel ways to assess the effectiveness of public health measures to reduce COVID moralities and negative socioeconomic impacts; - Developing and testing precision public health models and interventions, including new forms of testing and diagnosis. Summary The AI4D and AI4COVID programmes are well in line with the overall aim of the strategy for Swedish development cooperation within research for poverty reduction and sustainable development (20222028), contributing to: - the capacity-building for research, primarily in low-income countries, and regions, by strengthening conditions and capacity among national, and regional, research actors to participate in international research, and research dialogue, within AI and related fields; - global, regional and national research of relevance, within AI and related fields, to low-income countries and regions, by stimulating research of relevance to development at regional research organisations, and at universities in partner countries; - the promotion of AI research that, through innovation, can have an impact on poverty reduction and sustainable development.