IGF 2023 Town Hall #115 Africa’s readiness for Generative AI and ChatGPT; Opportunit

The session which will be facilitated by UNECA will focus on the potential benefits of generative AI in terms of increasing work efficiency, improving quality of services, Faster Results of outcomes: Cost Savings, Improved Decision Making: Increased Creativity of work, Improved Customer Experience and etc will be highlighted and discussed.
The recent buzz around generative AI has been driven by the simplicity of new user interfaces for creating high-quality text, graphics and videos in a matter of seconds. Generative AI starts with a prompt that could include text submitted as part of a chat, an image, a video or a design. Then various AI algorithms return new content in response to the prompt. Content can include essays, solutions to problems, or realistic fakes created from pictures or audio of a person.
The focus of the session will also mainly to asses Africa’s readiness for Generative AI and Chat GPT, opportunities, pin point some critical challenges and forward policy recommendations for the member states to fully harness the full potentials of Generative AI, Chat GPT and Machine learning. The contributions of UNECA to in surge the potential applications of AI in the continent will also be emphasised during the session.


The support of UNECA to in surge the application areas of Artificial intelligence in different sectors and hence bring socio-economic development in the continent is enormous. To this particular end, the African research centre for Artificial Intelligence (ARCAI) which is established in Congo Brazzaville with the support of UNECA will play a fundamental role to ensure and maximize the potential benefits of generative AI in the African continent through different research projects and capacity building programs which require rapid adaptation of the technology. The support of UNECA for the creation of the AU AI digital strategy will also have great contributions to stipulate and address the various challenges the continent is facing on the governance of AI, protection and availability of data, economic and cultural aspects, and AI related regulations for the ethical use of the technology in the continent. All the aforementioned issues will be the main discussion points of the session.

THe meeting will be on hybrid format