Professor Tshilidzi Marwala is the outgoing vice-chancellor and principal of the University of Johannesburg, and on 1 March 2023, he will be the Rector of the United Nations (UN) University and UN under-secretary-general. He is the author of the upcoming book, 'Heal Our World'. He is on Twitter at @txm1971. I recently gave a talk in New York on the role of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in Africa's development and was reminded of Kwame Nkrumah, the former Ghanaian president who said "we shall accumulate machinery and establish steel works, iron foundries and factories… it is within the possibility of science and technology to make even the Sahara bloom into a vast field with verdant vegetation for agricultural and industrial developments." More than 60 years after Nkrumah made this speech, we are still battling to economically develop Africa.