People with special needs can manage social interactions and unfamiliar surroundings more easily with the aid of robotics and artificial intelligence technologies.
People with special needs can access tools through these technologies, which are primarily intended to enhance speech and communication abilities.
Young inventors developed technological solutions for people with special needs during a three-month hackathon sponsored by the Kenya National Innovation Agency, Huawei, UNESCO, Assistive Technologies for Development, and Kenya Institute of Special Education.
The inventive students presented their ideas to a panel at the Africa AI Innovation Summit, which took place on Tuesday at the Kenya International Convention Centre (KICC). The panel’s goal was to stimulate the African ecosystem to produce African AI solutions to address African issues.
John Kiarie, a member of parliament for Dagoretti South, demanded during the summit that attention be paid to the infrastructure, data, skills, ethics, and funding that are essential for artificial intelligence (AI) to flourish in Africa.
“Africa has everything to ensure that Africa does not sleep through this fourth Industrial Revolution—all the resources at its disposal, a youthful, educated populace that is bursting with enthusiasm, and a fair amount of technological know-how,” Kiarie said.
At the AI Summit, which took place concurrently with the annual conference of the African Development Bank, a young innovator named Ephraim Mwereza emerged as the hackathon winner. Mwereza developed an AI system to diagnose autism.
A group creating a platform to overcome the communication gap between caretakers and autistic people won second place. Huawei has previously taught the students, who developed their solutions using Huawei Cloud.
Upskilling the youth was advocated by experts during the summit, as noted by Dr. Tomisin Fashina, the CIO of the African Development Bank; “We must educate ourselves out of under development, it all starts with education”.
