Things You Should Know Before Investment in AI within Africa

Artificial Intelligence is moving up at the rate of knots all across the globe. The investment in AI has got a lot to do with the benefit that it can provide to countries worldwide.

While it was initially thought that only developed nations would offer good investment opportunities for AI, even third-world countries within Africa have shown good potential in terms of AI.

Since there is lot of potential for investment in AI within Africa, here we look at some of the things you should know before pursuing such an investment. Many individual organizations have already gone the path of AI within African nations, and while they haven’t succeeded in achieving what they wanted, they have paved a way for other startups to follow.

Here are three lessons that we know from the example of organizations that have ventured towards investment in AI within the continent of Africa:

AI Startups Struggle to Get Good Valuations

It is a fact that AI startups in Africa fail to raise good valuations when they first start business. Not only do their capital raising ventures go on unattended doors, but the response can be quite a turn off. Northern American investors make more in a single morning, than investors in South Africa could during a whole year. This initial struggle quite literally takes away the fun of the start-up. Some investors do eye investments from abroad, but it is a complex task and majority fail.

Recruiting AI Talent Is Difficult

No AI-based company can succeed without the right AI talent in the form of data scientists and data analysts. If you don’t have such AI talent working with you, your Investment in AI would turn out to be futile.

The youth across all of Africa isn’t yet attracted to AI qualifications in the way that they should be. This leads to a limited talent pool and recruitment becomes harder.

Corporations Don’t Value AI

Corporate giants in Africa are still having a hard time stepping into the 21^st Century. While we’re into the much hyped intelligent future of the world, corporations across the whole of Africa are having a pretty hard time adjusting to this change. AI is not valued the way it is across the globe by larger giants.