Alliance for AI facilitates practical session on scaling artificial intelligence solutions

Daniel Iyanda -
Alliance for AI (Alliance4AI) facilitated a session on how startups in the 2019 Facebook Accelerator cohort can scale their artificial intelligence (AI) solutions across Africa and globally.

With about a month to the end of 2019 Facebook Accelerator, the session facilitated by Alliance4AI is one of the many training sessions the 12 startups participating in the deep-tech accelerator programme undergo.

The session was themed: A practical session on how to drive market-changing value with artificial intelligence.

Alliance4AI is a non-profit organisation stimulating Africa's adoption of emerging technologies for development.

> **Related Article:** [These are the 12 startups in the 2019 Facebook Accelerator cohort. A non-Nigerian startup makes a debut.](https://www.benjamindada.com/facebook-accelerator-fbstart-cohort/)

The practical session, which was held virtually, had six experienced data scientists and AI experts as speakers, namely:

  • Alexander Tsado, Founder of Alliance4AI and product team lead for cloud computing and AI at NVIDIA
  • Taurean Dyer, Technical Product Manager at NVIDIA
  • Dr Nicholas Nitombe, Senior Data Scientist at Harvard University
  • Simbarashe Timothy Motsi, Southern Africa Dean of School of AI
  • Opemipo Durodola, Lead IoT Engineer at Venture Garden Group
  • Azeez Oluwafemi, Researcher Engineer (Team Leader) at InstaDeep

The speakers addressed the questions of the techpreneurs on AI, informed them of opportunities such as grants and hardware discounts, and explained how they can implement end-to-end AI in their ventures.

One of the opportunities mentioned during the session was the NVIDIA Inception Accelerator programme that supports startups leveraging AI, regardless of their funding or product stage.

During his presentation, Alexander Tsado said, "Artificial Intelligence has the potential to create millions of jobs in Africa. I founded Alliance4AI to bring the global tools and opportunities for AI to Africa and support African entities like startups and schools, which are currently not top priority for global investors."

Founded in 2018, Alliance4AI work with governments, startups, training centres, and other stakeholders in African tech ecosystem to ensure the continent adopts and contributes to emerging technologies. It aims to achieve this objective through four ways:

  1. Talent: Aggregate informal and formal institutions across Africa to experiment with new forms of learning to accelerate the adoption of ground-breaking technologies.
  2. Policy: Leveraging its unique local and diaspora network of AI experts, Alliance4AI advises governments and regional governing bodies on policy framework to stimulate capacity-building and implementation of emerging technologies.
  3. Inclusion: Foster the adoption of emerging technologies by women, men, rural settlements, cities across Africa, and Africans in the Diaspora
  4. Jobs: Direct access to jobs and contract for tiered community members, leveraging its comprehensive database of African AI companies. This is especially useful today as Africa is increasingly becoming the continent with most young people in the world. Unfortunately, however, close to 50% of young population is without jobs or are ready for jobs of the future.