APA-Abidjan (Côte d’Ivoire) – The 4th edition of the Cyber Africa Forum, which opened on Monday 15 April, brought together leading stakeholders from the public and private sectors to discuss innovation and defence strategies in the face of new digital threats and the management of sensitive data.
Ivorian Minister of Digital Transition and Digitalisation, Ibrahim Kalil Konaté said that while technological advances presented opportunities for businesses, they also posed major security and ethical challenges.
Cyber security, he said, is one of these key challenges, as is artificial intelligence (AI), which opens up unprecedented horizons but also raises numerous ethical and societal questions.
According to Minister Ibrahim Kalil Konaté, the cost of cybercrime in Africa in 2022 is estimated at around $4 billion, or more than 2,000 billion CFA francs, according to the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
The Commissioner General of the Cyber Africa Forum, Franck Kié, pointed out that artificial intelligence is a source of opportunities that could contribute 15.7 percent of Africa’s GDP by 2030, representing an added value of $1.2 billion and the creation of 20 million jobs.
Today, cybercriminals are increasingly using AI to develop sophisticated attacks.
Franck Kié confided that the cost of cybercrime is rising, with estimates that it could reach $10,500 billion by 2025.
Cyber threats do not recognise borders, which is why he believes international cooperation is essential if they are to be tackled effectively. Over the course of two days, experts will discuss “What strategies should we adopt to deal with the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Africa?”
The opening panel of this 4th edition of the Cyber Africa Forum, held in Abidjan, gave experts the opportunity to highlight the possibilities offered by AI in Africa and to propose areas for improvement to enable the continent to catch up.
Artificial Intelligence offers huge potential for improvement in a number of areas in Africa, including education, health and industry. However, it also presents challenges that need to be addressed if the full potential of this technology is to be realised.
The experts also pointed to data as the biggest challenge facing Africa. Statistics show that “only 2 percent of digital data is stored in Africa.”
According to Adnane Ben Halima, Vice President of Public Relations at Huawei Northern Africa, Africa remains a continent ripe for the development of artificial intelligence, but this technology is still under-exploited.
The experts also pointed out that African countries need supportive policies and appropriate infrastructure to harness the power of AI and accelerate their development.
The data that feeds AI algorithms must be “adapted to our local realities,” said Georges Mpoudi Ngole, Managing Director of Cybastion, speaking on the panel.
Tunisia’s Minister of Communication Technologies, Nizar Ben Neji, stressed the need to develop a strategy to collect and store data on the continent, create an ecosystem to facilitate the sharing of this data, and build infrastructure to increase computing power, data collection and processing capacity, and internet coverage.
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