Africa has had massive oil and gas discoveries in recent years – including the Greater Tortue Ahmeyim offshore Senegal and Mauritania, the Luiperd and Brulpadda in South Africa and the Rovuma Basin discoveries offshore Mozambique, among others – but development has been slow owing largely to restricted investment, Covid-19 impacts and a lack of modern digital solutions. With more than 600-million people living without access to electricity in Africa, the accelerated development of Africa's oil and gas is key for making energy poverty history. Now, with the emergence of AI and analytics across the oil and gas sector, an opportunity has risen for Africa to drive modern and sustainable energy growth for years to come. With oil and gas production decreasing in Africa due to natural declines in legacy projects, increasing the use of AI and analytics across the upstream segment could help simplify drilling activities, revitalise the sector and expand the continent's hydrocarbons reserves for energy reliability, saving project developers, operators and owners time and resources. Furthermore, with African hydrocarbon-producing countries such as Nigeria losing billions in revenue due to theft and vandalism of infrastructure – a condition that is restraining Africa's oil and gas sector from expanding – AI and analytics tools can help optimisa industry growth by enhancing infrastructure maintenance and security across the entire oil and gas value chain, thereby helping reduce energy and revenue loss, and in the process stimulating investments across the oil and gas sector. What's more, despite Africa accounting for less than 3% of all carbon emissions, global energy transition related policies are hindering the deployment of investments necessary for boosting the continent's hydrocarbons sector.

On this episode of the eeDesignIt Podcast, we're joined by Dhonam Pemba to explore artificial intelligence (AI) and his new company KidX AI. Dhonam is a neural engineer by PhD, a former rocket scientist and a serial AI entrepreneur. He was CTO of the exited company, Kadho which was acquired by Roybi for its Voice AI technology. At Kadho Sports he was their Chief Scientist which had clients in MLB, USA Volleyball, NFL, NHL, NBA, and NCAA. His latest company, KidX, is in the AI edtech space, where he has built NLP and Voice assessment to serve China's leading robotics company with 4M users.

For our latest expert interview on our blog, we've welcomed Dhonam Pemba to share his thoughts on the topic of artificial intelligence (AI) and his journey behind founding KidX AI. Dhonam is a neural engineer by PhD, a former rocket scientist and a serial AI entrepreneur with one exit. He was CTO of the exited company, Kadho which was acquired by Roybi for its Voice AI technology. At Kadho Sports he was their Chief Scientist which had clients in MLB, USA Volleyball, NFL, NHL, NBA, and NCAA. His latest company, KidX, is in the AI edtech space, where he has built NLP and Voice assessment to serve China's leading robotics company with 4M users.

Dr. Dhonam Pemba is the CEO and Co-Founder of KidX, he is a neural engineer by education, a former rocket scientist by work, and AI entrepeneur by entrepeneurship. He received his Biomedical Engineering undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University, and hi PhD from the University of California, Irvine also in BME, but worked on neural interface for his thesis. Can you me about the NASA JPL project and how it was related to your PhD work? My PhD work was building micro implantable neural implants. Very similar to the work that Elon Musks's company Neuralink is now doing.