Artificial Intelligence: What Does This Mean For Nigeria And Africa?

Introduction

The term Artificial Intelligence (AI) refers to a simulation of human intelligence that can rationalize and take actions that have the best chance of achieving a specific goal.¹ It can further be defined as an existing network of computer components and connections that mimic the human ability to receive, process, reason and communicate information through various media. It can search through data to combine information for the production of a specific result through multiple media based on an initial request from a human operator. Artificial Intelligence consists of both hardware and software infrastructure that exist in various combinations of each other, depending on the intended use and scale of the AI application. This article will briefly highlight the fundamentals and brief history of AI and assess how best the technology can be exploited for the benefit of Nigeria and Africa.