This paper proposes the creation of a Swahili Question Answering (QA) benchmark dataset, aimed at addressing the underrepresentation of Swahili in natural language processing (NLP). Drawing from established benchmarks like SQuAD, GLUE, KenSwQuAD, and KLUE, the dataset will focus on providing high-quality, annotated question-answer pairs that capture the linguistic diversity and complexity of Swahili. The dataset is designed to support a variety of applications, including machine translation, information retrieval, and social services like healthcare chatbots. Ethical considerations, such as data privacy, bias mitigation, and inclusivity, are central to the dataset's development. Additionally, the paper outlines future expansion plans to include domain-specific content, multimodal integration, and broader crowdsourcing efforts. The Swahili QA dataset aims to foster technological innovation in East Africa and provide an essential resource for NLP research and applications in low-resource languages. The East Africa region boasts a rich Swahili linguistic heritage, with the language being spoken by millions across the region [1]. Tanzania promoted Swahili to national language status in favour of other ethnic languages as part of efforts to foster national unity.

James Muldoon is a reader in management at the University of Essex, Mark Graham a professor at the Oxford Internet Institute and Callum Cant a senior lecturer at the University of Essex business school. They work together at Fairwork, a project that appraises the working conditions in digital workplaces, and they are co-authors of Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI. Why did you write the book? James Muldoon: The idea for the book emerged out of field work we did in Kenya and Uganda on the data annotation industry. We spoke to a number of data annotators, and the working conditions were just horrendous.

Every spring, thousands of Greater Spotted Eagles make the arduous journey from East Africa and Greece to southern Belarus to breed. Now, a study has revealed the impact of the war in Ukraine on this annual migration for the first time. Researchers from the University of East Anglia found that shortly after Ukraine was invaded by Russia, the birds' usual migratory course was altered. 'The war in Ukraine has had a devastating impact on people and the environment,' said Charlie Russell, lead author of the study. 'Our findings provide a rare window into how conflicts affect wildlife, improving our understanding of the potential impacts of exposure to such events or other extreme human activities that are difficult to predict or monitor.'

AI is not anymore a tool of the media industry where it just serves to solve simple use cases with simple AI algorithms. "For example, in the communications sector, connecting everyone, connecting everything, everywhere, at any time, on demand, is an enormously complex task, with equally complex infrastructure and technology," says Todd Ashton(T.A), Head of Ericsson South and East Africa. T.A: As a multinational networking and telecommunications company, Artificial Intelligence is a vital skill domain and technology for creating business value in terms of improved performance, higher efficiency, enhanced customer experience as well as creating new business models and use cases for 5G, IoT and enterprises across Africa. AI and automation will help address the complexity of 5G networks, drive efficiencies and improve customer experience as well as open new revenue streams for communications service providers (CSPs). However, smarter, AI fueled networks will accelerate Africa's digital agenda, and drive the progress and prospects of 5G in Africa.

In the wildlife reserves of East Africa, elephants, rhinos, gorillas, and other large mammals are hunted by poachers. All that stands between these animals and harm's way are small teams of park rangers and conservationists. The danger is very real for these species on the brink: A staggering 35,000 African elephants are killed each year, putting them just a decade away from extinction, according to the non-profit RESOLVE. Technology is an increasingly critical tool for protecting elephants and other large animals, given their necessarily expansive habitats: A group of just 50 rangers in Kenya, for example, covers a reserve of 3,000 square miles. Park rangers and conservationists have used motion-activated camera traps to catch poachers in action, but the animals are tragically already lost by the time rangers can respond.

Researchers in Japan and The Netherlands have, for the first time, used machine learning techniques, in particular artificial neural networks (ANNs), to predict the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), a positive phase of which has affected weather and climate in India and Australia in a spectacular fashion so far in 2019-20. The IOD has both positive and negative phases, and signals large socio-economic impacts on many countries and hence predicting the IOD well in advance will benefit the affected societies, note authors JV Ratnam and Swadhin K Behera (Application Laboratory, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology, Yokohama) and HA Dijkstra (Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research Utrecht, Utrecht University in The Netherlands) in a paper published by Nature. The IOD is a mode of climate variability observed in the Indian Ocean sea surface temperature anomalies with one pole in Sumatra (Indonesia) and the other near East Africa. Therefore, the IOD is represented by an index derived from the gradient between the western equatorial Indian Ocean and the south-eastern equatorial Indian Ocean. It starts sometime in May-June, peaks in September-October and ends in November (2019's rather strong positive phase of the IOD lasted into early January of 2020).

The first artificial intelligence-based (--AI--) symptom-assessment application to be made available in Swahili has been launched today, unlocking access to health information and advice for more than 100 million people seeking healthcare in East Africa.-- The app, developed by Ada Health, combines a world-class medical knowledge database with intelligent reasoning technology to help users understand what might be causing their symptoms, as well as providing localized guidance about what they should do next. In doing so, the app aims to empower patients to make informed decisions about their own health, while also complementing and supporting existing healthcare services, doctors and clinics.-- Globally, four billion people - more than half the world--s population - lack access to basic health services, with the disadvantages of this global health challenge often disproportionately experienced by people in low- and middle-income countries. East Africa is a region that is acutely affected by this issue. By offering an AI-powered symptom-assessment medical application in Swahili, a language spoken by over 100 million people across the likes of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Mozambique and Somalia, Ada hopes to significantly improve access to quality health information and advice, particularly for young people and families.

AI training data provider Samasource has raised a $14.8 million Series A funding round led by Ridge Ventures. The San Francisco headquartered company delivers Fortune 100 companies with the inputs they need for machine learning development in fields including autonomous transportation, e-commerce and robotics. And it does so with a global work-force of data-specialists, a large number of whom are located in East Africa. In addition to San Francisco, New York and the Hague, Samasource has offices and teams in Kenya and Uganda. The company has a global staff of 2900 and is the largest AI and data annotation employer in East Africa, according to CEO and founder Leila Janah.

Seven decades ago, agricultural scientists used high-yielding, dwarf varieties of wheat and rice to revolutionize agriculture across Asia and Latin America – and now European data scientists are teaming up with Kenyan farmers to use the fruits of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to drive the next agricultural one. The Green Revolution produced massive increases in crop yields throughout Asia and Latin America, but even today, many smallholders –farmers who produce crops on small pieces of land – struggle to afford and utilize the mechanized equipment and agricultural chemicals that came with that revolution. When it comes to Africa, there is still great potential for productivity increases in agriculture. The number of small-holder farmers in Kenya could be between 5 million and 9 million people according to some estimates. In order to see how artificial intelligence, machine learning and big data could help those farmers, French consultancy firm Capgemini teamed up with a Kenyan social enterprise in the Kakamega region in Western Kenya.

CIO East Africa is back with its annual series of East Africa's IoT & AI Summit scheduled for 22nd –23rd August, 2019 in Nairobi, Kenya. This summit lined to explore and review the various applications of Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) is further purposed to highlight the true potential of technology across multiple sectors and industries acting as a catalyst between policy makers, government, market movers, and thought leadership. While launching the Advisory Board for the 3rd IoT & AI Summit, Laura Chite, CEO, CIO East Africa said: "Our highly researched summit agenda is determined to deliver insightful and the latest information from inspiring speakers from across Africa." According to Chite delegates at the two-day summit will be equipped with knowledge of latest developments that shall enable them to network with the industry key personnel. Among the volunteer IoT & AI Summit 2019 Advisory Board members dedicated to crystalize the visionary conference agenda are Ahmed Maawy, Developer BRCK, Lorraine Maina – Enterpreneur.