Internet technology giant Google has officially opened its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Centre in Ghana with high hopes of finding solutions to Africa's problems. Artificial intelligence is an area of computer science that emphasizes the creation of intelligent machines that work and react like humans. It helps find solutions to real-world problems. It can help people focus on what is relevant and open up new ways to solve problems in almost every imaginable field such as AI helping pathologists to spot cancer cells on slides, advising farmers on how to address problems with their crops and helping manufacturers detect equipment breakdowns. Google is optimistic the lab in the West African country – the first in Africa – will transform lives by coming up with bespoke solutions for the continent's problems including natural disasters.

By JULIE OWINO, NAIROBI, Kenya, Apr 18 – Agriculture is slated to take the lead in the adoption of Artificial Intelligence with farmers increasingly now using technology to monitor plant, soil and weather conditions. Speaking during the launch of'AI for Good' at Strathmore University, Microsoft East Africa Manager Sebu Haileleul said there is a large pool of workforce and farmers in the agriculture sector but AI can also be adapted in other industry. "The agriculture sector contributes a lot towards the country economy but certainly AI is not only applicable to the agriculture sector but can be adopted in other industries," said Haieleleul. Currently, farmers have adapted some applications where they can use to access loans from banks. According to Microsoft East Africa government Affairs Director Christopher Akiwumi, the AI adoption process has made it easier for farmers to stimulate their growth through easy and quick Access of loans from various government institutions. However, there is a need to support and raise the skills gap in the wake of the adoption of AI and different technologies in the coming years.

Landslides have caused more than 11,500 fatalities in 70 countries between 2007-2010. Over 1000 people were victims of a landslide that hit Sierra Leone in August 2017. The situation is getting worse as the volume and intensity of rainfall in West Africa is increasing. In April, Colombia's landslide left at least 254 dead and hundreds missing. Landslides are challenging across various levels, for example: social, economic, infrastructural, and environmental.

Today, businesses need to be able to predict demand and trends to stay in line with any sudden market changes and economy swings. This is exactly where forecasting tools, powered by Data Science, come into play, enabling organizations to successfully deal with strategic and capacity planning. Smart forecasting techniques can be used to reduce any possible risks and assist in making well-informed decisions. One of our customers, an enterprise from the Middle East, needed to predict their market demand for the upcoming twelve weeks. They required a market forecast to help them set their short-term objectives, such as production strategy, as well as assist in capacity planning and price control.

In an bid to reduce the effects of food waste further, millions of trees are being planted across the globe, with Ethiopia recently setting a record of 30 million trees in a day. But while global efforts to plant new trees are necessary, British start-up Biocarbon Engineering have identified issues. Planting by hand isn't the most effective; it's extremely time consuming, and therefore the number of trees that can be planted is limited. This is where artificial intelligence comes in.

Most research on lifelong learning (LLL) applies to images or games, but not language. Here, we introduce LAMAL, a simple yet effective method for LLL based on language modeling. LAMAL replays pseudo samples of previous tasks while requiring no extra memory or model capacity. To be specific, LAMAL is a language model learning to solve the task and generate training samples at the same time. At the beginning of training a new task, the model generates some pseudo samples of previous tasks to train alongside the data of the new task. The results show that LAMAL prevents catastrophic forgetting without any sign of intransigence and can solve up to five very different language tasks sequentially with only one model. Overall, LAMAL outperforms previous methods by a considerable margin and is only 2-3\% worse than multitasking which is usually considered as the upper bound of LLL. Our source code is available at https://github.com/xxx.

Research forecasts that by 2025, machines will perform more current work tasks than humans. Murat Sonmez, member of the managing board, and Head of the Centre for the WEF Fourth Industrial Revolution Network, expands on the role humans might play. The Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR) is at the center of the current economic frontier. In reality, is Africa prepared for such changes? Moving quickly and being agile are key principles of success in the 4IR.

"I think the goal of education is to learn about the world and different types of knowledge, [to] find what your passion or passions are, and to learn by doing. Get involved with the world and try to change the world." At Singularity University, we envision a world where everyone has access to information, environments, and experiences that can build intelligence, knowledge, and skills for all people at all stages of their lives, both for personal fulfillment and to benefit society. Close your eyes and imagine what the future of learning might look like. Is it possible that instead of children going to school, the schools follow them wherever they go?

South Africa has no shortage of aspiring Zuckerbergs, and potential financiers, if their ideas are original and viable, judging from the impressive queue at the Sandton Convention Centre on Tuesday morning. Though billed as an artificial intelligence (AI) gathering, the dominant theme of the AI Summit appeared to be tech start-up funding. I started the day attending a presentation by former FNB CEO turned venture capitalist Michael Jordaan in the JSE-sponsored'scale-ups' room. Jordaan ended his talk by begging the young, educated members of the audience not to emigrate, but to remain in South Africa and start businesses offering solutions to the country's many serious problems. "Entrepreneurs can do more for this country than politicians or anyone else," he says.

Stears, after the launch of Nigeria's first real-time election database, is looking for an experienced data scientist to join Stears Intelligence: its data science and analytics team. Your role and project may change quicker than you expect. The only constant is that you will lead processes from data collection, cleaning, and preprocessing to training models and deploying them to production. You will also help in delivering products that empowers governments, investors, researchers and professionals in their quest for accurate and accessible data and intelligence. Our ideal candidate will be passionate about artificial intelligence and stay up-to-date with the latest developments in the field.