AI can be transformative for Africa, but the continent must move quickly to empower its youth to optimise the technology’s potential. This is according to Prof. Abejide Ade-Abjola, professor of AI and Applications at the Johannesburg Business School at the University of Johannesburg and founder and chairman of GRIT Lab Africa. Ade-Abjola was speaking at the Huawei Cloud Tech Wave DeepSeek workshop in Johannesburg last week.

“In the African context, AI offers us the perfect opportunity to leapfrog and finally catch up with the rest of the world. The quickest of us cannot keep up with AI development, so we need to weaponise the young people in numbers to chase AI, and let those who are too old to move, move into strategy,” Ade-Abjola noted.

Discussing certain challenges, he went on to state that parts of Africa appeared stuck in a ‘timeless dimension’, with the same environment, challenges and newspaper headlines they had had in 1982. No progress had been made in terms of infrastructure and digital development, and the topic of AI did not come under discussion, Ade-Abjola said.

“The solvers - the guys who are supposed to solve these problems are the young people. But they are spending too much time playing games and streaming, and they don’t like school because education hasn’t evolved much. We need to throw money at these problems and create AI tools to solve them. We need to involve young people, train, innovate and commercialise their innovations, create new market opportunities for small businesses and tech start-ups, and export these innovations to other countries as well. You also need accountable structures to ensure that any investments have the desired impact,” he said.

Ade-Abjola believes AI could prove transformative for the continent, and could even help to retain indigenous datasets out of Africa. He further believes tools, such as DeepSeek, could lower the barrier to entry for AI innovation, offering advanced AI at a lower cost.

He highlighted the work of the UJ Johannesburg Business School (JBS) Innovation Lab which offers students practical programming training as part of real-life projects, as well as GRIT Lab Africa, a social project training young people aged 18 - 22 across 38 higher institutions of learning in 11 African countries.   

Having trained over 2000 students since 2016, GRIT Labs students are now focusing on AI-enabled projects with social impact. “Solving for X is good, but solving societal problems is better,” said Ade-Abjola.

“We don’t teach much theory, but rather train students in technical skills and focus on discipline, balanced with incentives whereby they can earn money. By the time they graduate they have a portfolio of evidence to show employers. For example, the University of Johannesburg has a piece of software in use by 50 000 users on the campus, which was developed by young people,” he said. Other projects the students have developed include a VR courtroom, VR electrochemistry lab and a career advisory app.

 “We are playing with DeepSeek through Huawei Cloud, and used it to create an ‘AI Dad’ app to offer advice to young people. The future is open with tools like DeepSeek, and Huawei Cloud leads in this space,” he said.

 Huawei Cloud emphasised its commitment to empowering Africa, highlighting its heavy investment in R&D, full-stack AI development capabilities and has AI-ready data centers in SA which they will continue to invest in.

Roc Bai, VP of Huawei Cloud Sub-Saharan Africa, stated, “AI is changing everything,” further noting companies around the world were investing heavily in computing power to harness AI, but that the arrival of DeepSeek had significantly reduced the cost, paving the way for faster adoption. “Huawei Cloud makes it easier for organisations to take advantage of AI, with full-stack AI capabilities and a dedicated AI data centre set to launch soon,” Bai said.