By EMEKA  AGINAM, who was in Nairobi, Kenya

ALL apprehensions over IBM’s claim to have developed a technology that can solve Africa’s problems, disappeared by the time participants at the just concluded IBM Cognitive Colloquium,toured the IBM research lab at the Catholic University, Nairobi, Kenya.

The technologies on display gave convincing signals that cognitive computing is the next frontier that will address African local challenges.

What is cognitive computing?

Cognitive computing is a system that learns and interacts naturally with people to extend what either humans or machine could do on their own.  They help human experts make better decisions by penetrating the complexity of Big Data.

In educational sector, schools with poor or non-existent computer resources could link into the cloud-based system via smart-phones or portable devices with internet connectivity.

In the area of medical, for instance, Doctors, Nurses and Field workers could use the system to help diagnose illnesses and identify the best treatment for each patient.  If community health workers are empowered by the expertise of Watson through an app, they could engage through text, image or voice in a dialogue with Watson based on its knowledge of disease symptoms in medical literature.

Cognitive computing to change Africa:

Setting 10-year plan to address cognitive computing in Africa, the IBM scientists at the Lab argued that cognitive computing is the new frontier of computing because of its ability to bring improvements in the African continent in the areas of agriculture, education, health, water, traffic among others.

Eye on Africa:

Although multinational companies offering technology solutions have their eye on Africa, IBM appears to be leading the way having successfully built vast brainpower supercomputer known as Watson to be utilized in Africa in an apparent attempt to solve some of the continent’s most pressing problems.

IBM’s Watson is designed to “understand” natural language requests and then access vast quantities of unstructured data to find the best answers to questions.

Watson is an artificially intelligent computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language.

It also has access to 200 million pages of information, drawn from books, encyclopaedias and other databases.

The technology could be used in commercial settings.  It can serve as a personal assistant, interacting with customers and sorting through troves of data for titbits of useful information.

With optimism, IBM’s scientists assured that cognitive systems promise to penetrate complexity and assist people and organizations in better decision making.

Speaking on one of the Lucy projects on education, Dr. Charity Wayua, a Research Scientist at IBM Research Africa told visitors during the tour that the facility enhances digital learning environment.

According to her, the facility is all about helping the teacher use a better interaction for students. The “goal is to make education personalized. Teachers can use the facility to deal with students’ cases including emotional state, health issues or other factors that can inhibit students’ learning” she explained.

For majority of speakers at a panel discussion at the forum titled: Cognitive systems, Africa’s grand challenges and new business opportunities, if the new technology is embraced by African leaders, it can help doctors evaluate and treat patients, augment the ways we see, anticipate major weather events, and even contribute to smarter urban planning.

Technology for Africa:

Earlier in his keynote address during the event, the IBM Fellow, Vice President and CTO, Watson, Rob High explained that the focus of the IBM Research Africa Lab is based on providing technology solutions to some of the pressing challenges bedevilling the African continent such as provision of energy, water, human mobility, agriculture, healthcare, financial inclusion and public safety.

He told the gathering that the facilities in the lab hold a lot of potentials for Africa for digital inclusion in the 21st century knowledge society.

Time for Africa to embrace cognitive computing:

Director General, Ghana-Indian Kofi Annam Centre of Excellence in ICT, Dorothy Gordon said during the panel discussion, that this is the time for Africa to embrace cognitive computing to cater for its development efforts, while noting that skills were needed to achieve this.

According to her, “Data is more than the oil.  Data is the most important asset.  Pay serious attention to computing ability for digital inclusion.  Shift attention to data and  technology to solve our problems.  We have to pay attention to how we are collecting data. We should have partner institutions in West Africa to work with IBM Lab.  We have to make this work.  We cannot leave it for IBM alone.  We have to get involved as equal partners in IBM ‘Project Lucy’.  Nigeria is the centre of the market.  Nigeria has the brain but we should create technology and not a consumer of technology’’, she said.

Big data is the next frontier:

Also speaking, Wolfgang Fengler, Sector Leader , World Bank in his presentation, ‘Big Data and Africa in the new era of computing’, big data is the next frontier in the development , adding that Africa will be left behind in the new economy if  it fails to embrace cognitive computing and Big Data.

For Uyi Stewart, Chief Scientist of IBM Research in Africa, the system could transform education and health in the same way as mobile banking has transformed finance on the continent.

Money on infrastructure not commensurate:

“Africa is making money but the amount of money invested in infrastructure is not commensurate.  In order to make more money, we need to raise the infrastructure by investing more money.  That is the only way to make long range plans to leapfrog into the Information age.

“If we do things right, we can close the gap.  Leapfrogging is the way out.  With IBM solutions on education, health, water, transportation, among others at the Research Lab, African challenges can be surmounted.

“We are bringing all the innovative solutions at the Lab in Nigeria.  We have solutions to solve traffic issues in Nigeria.  We have solutions to solve health issues.  We need to develop the ecosystem by embracing the cognitive computing by IBM,” he said.

Highlight of the event was the award of prizes to photographers who were able to use photography to tell the African story.

Tobbie Balogun from Nigeria won the grand prize for capturing a baby-sitting scene, where people leave their children in the care of others while eking out a living.  Others whose works were selected were Frank Odwesso and Lawrence Shabu, both from Kenya.  The award programme was organized by IBM.