Fatshimetrie, the reference in scientific and technological news, takes you today to the heart of agricultural innovation in Africa. In Buea, in the southwest of Cameroon, Harisu Fanyui, a passionate farmer, inspects his corn fields. The leaves are turning yellow, the stems are struggling to grow. Thanks to an agricultural application powered by artificial intelligence installed on his mobile phone, he quickly manages to identify the cause of the problem and intervene.
The main objective of Fanyui and the Farmer Guide application that he co-founded is to help African farmers improve their productivity by allowing them to identify crop diseases on their various farms. A remarkable technological advance that, unfortunately, does not yet benefit farmers in neighboring cities without internet connection and suffering from poor electrification.
In remote villages, many farmers cannot benefit from this technology due to infrastructure gaps. These challenges of accessing artificial intelligence in remote areas of the continent were at the heart of discussions at the International Forum on Government Communication in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
The challenge of accessing artificial intelligence in remote areas of the continent was highlighted at the International Forum on Government Communication in Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.
During this event, the focus was on the challenges of artificial intelligence as a medium of communication between governments, the population and the media, and its particular impact on the development of AI-related infrastructure.
“When you work on developing your intelligence infrastructure, including the network, the internet, the devices, the electricity, this is the infrastructure that we need and that matters. Once this infrastructure is in place, we can say that it is possible to adapt certain AI tools and applications. But how do you develop AI while continuing to work with 3G or 2G? ” asks Dr. Mohamed Abdel Zaher, CEO of Artificial Intelligence Journalism for Research and Forecasting (AIJRF).
The gaps in digital infrastructure in Africa remain significant, with an estimated 900 million people still not connected to the internet. An equal number do not have access to electricity, posing a major challenge for the deployment of artificial intelligence in these regions.
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