Just yesterday night I got talking with a friend and we were discussing technological advancement and what it would mean in say like thirty years time. The types of technology we would have then would be mind blowing to our ancestors.
This morning i was still thinking about technological advancement, artificial intelligence in particular and how much of that we could see in Africa. I don't mind saying this because I'm African but we've always been the less competitive ones in terms of technology.
A lot of technology are usually developed on other continents and then shipped down to us, although in recent times I'm proud of how far Africans have continuously made their marks in various fields. We have leading countries like Japan, America and China who have continued to improve their technology and that's what has made them superpowers.
Nigeria my country is an example of one who should be a leading frontier in this aspect. Blessed with crude oil and a lot of other mineral resources, we cannot say funding is the issue. Also we have steel which is a very useful material in a lot of technology used today in abundance in ajaokuta kogi State in Nigeria, but so far we still import a lot of the technological gadgets we use presently.
We've always taken the backdrop in terms of these things majorly because of the level of corruption in many institutions, but I think it's time to look inward and see that tech particularly AI is what the future is shifting towards. Should we still continue to wait for breakthroughs in other nations before we can begin to make our own.
Already nations such as Kenya have seen the importance and the government is hailed as one of the countries with readiness to development in AI. Even with Nigeria being a stronghold in Africa, it's development in this regard has been a lot slow in my opinion. Although many sectors such as agricultural and the banking sector are leading frontiers in it's usage, indigenous development by our own researchers has been slow.
If we're to see massive increase in technological development in Africa, there also has to be massive increase in support from the governments of the various nations. Only then can be begin to see the Africa of our dreams, an Africa of the future.