Preparing Ghana for the Artificial Intelligence Ghanaians Want

Abstract

How much and which AI does Ghana need when its challenges remain largely infrastructural? What kind of AI does Ghana need in healthcare, agriculture, and education when there are still not enough hospitals, roads, and schools? Many of the innovations from tech corporations in the Global North envision products of no immediate use to Africans. What would we do with generative models in classrooms when we still need more classrooms and teachers? Why would we need autonomous vehicles when many of our roads remain unpaved? Both questions show that too often the Global North wants to test their technologies on our populations and gather our data, while offering these in the guise of philanthropy. What we need is investment in infrastructure, which has historically been uneven, from the Chinese with their Belt and Road initiative to Americans who have claimed they want to provide the “last mile” of Internet connectivity when in fact the “first mile” remains still unreliable. This paper interviews Ghanaians who work in tech and considers the kinds of infrastructural investments that help Ghana and enable our participation in building algorithms we want that will serve Ghanaians.