Making AI Attractive for Women IN Africa

Muthoni co-founded the “Nairobi Women Learning & Data Science”, an initiative that aims at encouraging Kenyan women to get into STEM careers. She launched a 4-month-program teaching women how to do data science with a focus on coding. “Only 0.5% of the world’s population can code. We are moving to a stage where all the products we use have code elements. For me, it’s important that we start to have a representation of the different cultures and mindsets around the table”, noted Muthoni.

Several women in Kenya have benefited from the initiative. Out of ten, six women have got new opportunities either as junior data scientists or as data science managers in their companies. Muthoni noted that encouraging women to code is a step in the right direction. According to her, people think very differently and so, allowing diversity in problem-solving brings an interesting aspect on board. Currently, the Nairobi chapter of Women Learning & data science is the third biggest in the world.

Advocacy for practical AI in line with Africa’s needs

As a data scientist, Muthoni Wanyoike advocates for having data sets that are representative of the actual world and its differences in terms of gender cultures, geography and even ideology. With regards to facial recognition, Muthoni recommends that changes be made to include that of the African people as existing data are often representative of the Western world.

Muthoni is working towards a better adaptation of AI in Africa. She is an organizing member of Deep learning Indaba, one of the largest conferences gathering AI scientists from all over Africa. She also worked as an assistant programmes Manager at Code for Africa and Team InstaDeep- a company specialising in AI-based decision making for companies.

With her experience, she has become aware of some challenges associated with applying AI in Africa. She noted that most of the problems on the continent call for a more practical approach to using Artificial Intelligence. “I think that very modest advancements in AI give us the ability to solve problems and automate systems, which helps us to create better systems here. For example, for the problem of congestion and traffic in Africa, we do not need self-driving cars, but rather better planning”, she explained.

Since 2020, Muthoni has been a member of the editorial board for the “AI and ethics” Journal, Springer Nature. Forbes Africa Magazine also listed her in its Top 30 under 30 ranking.

REFERENCEInformation form www.africawomenexperts.com was used in this story.