Prof Sam Takavarasha Jr: Research Blogg
A call for multi-disciplinary approach to deployment and development of Artificial Intelligence: Take aways from Prof A. Mutambara’s 7th Book Launch
Last night I had occasion to attend Prof Aurther 7th Mutambara’s book launch. I must confess that part of my incentive was the book title: Artificial Intelligence a driver for inclusive development and shared prosperity for the global South. This was my first chance to attend any of his book 6 earlier launches, I am therefore not sure if the audience attending the AI book launch was peculiar to it as I thought.
I saw experts from the Arts, Humanities, Business, Agriculture, politicians, and the usual Institute of Engineer members. There were about three cabinet ministers that Prof AGO kept referring to during his presentation. As the crowd continued to grow, someone said remember this is AGO, the former deputy prime minister is bigger than life. Assuming that, the diverse audience attending Prof Mutambara was not about his bigger than live persona, this in my view tells a rich story of Zimbabwean people’s interest in AI.
While I find artificial intelligence to be a topical area for all academics and practitioners that have any intellectual curiosity, I was also curious about the developmentalist flavour of the book title. The technology for development discourses is reminiscent of the ICT for development discourses that pre-occupied information systems in developing countries scholars during the early 2020s. Most of protagonists were drawing from development economists such as Jeff Sach, Joseph Stiglitz, Amartya Sen and the late pragmatist Mahbub ul Haq who operationalised Sen's capability approach into Human development Index HDIs in the early 1990s.
The development agenda has attracted endless controversy including the critique of the 1950s dependence theory of Daniel Lener to the shock therapy of Jeff Sachs and several arguments in between. Contemporary discourses touch on digital imperialism, data colonisation and of course commodity dependency is a constant. There has also been a contentious debate about whether Africa should follow the same development trajectory as the West or the Asian Tigers. This appetite for mimicry is akin to the mordenisation theories shades of its contemporary adaptations. These debates extended to the terminology itself. Prof Mutambara’s book addresses part of it i.e. the developing and developed nations dichotomy. The terminology debates exposed the fatal flaws of concepts such as leap frogging and catching up with the West as expecting Africa to accept eternal mimicry of the West.
Given the hot debates of the early 20s one has to be mindful of the pitfalls that my fellow engineers and natural scientists fail to see. The main one is technological determinism as articulated by Mashal McLuhan who at the time opined on less effective and less convivial technologies such as radio and TV. Technological determinism naively suggests that introducing technology will cause positive socio-economic change. This has been debunked by several scholars such as Christianthi Avgerou and others who contest the assertion that technology alone is the primary driver of societal change. Closer home my colleague Nephas Mufutumari the ICT director at WUA repeats like a broken record that it is not the technology it is what you want to achieve with it. '
Several researchers on the role of technology in the global south / developing economies have pointed at under-uterlised telecentres across Africa as a testimony to the folly of technological determinism. Before putting my teeth on the pages of the book that Prof Mutambara launched last night at Conqenor House, let me hasten to say that the presentation was great. I am not accusing him of the hard tech determinism that purports that technology will autonomously dictate socio-economic outcomes for Africa. He called for Africa to adapt and deploy AI. He wants Africa to get involved in AI research and practice and he also advocated for us to build AI infrastructure.
By the way, he is not the only Zimbabwean to call for the same agenda to weaponise AI for our socio-economic development. Our government, our universities and UNESCO in particular have been making profound efforts to strategise and plan the deployment of AI in Zimbabwe. I have had occasion to participate in various efforts workshops and round tables by the Ministry of ICT Postal and Courier Services, POTRAZ and UNESCO. POTRAZ and the Ministry of Higher Education have taken a further step to sponsor and facilitate the implementation of emerging technologies. The universities, polytechnics and secondary schools have been participating in the Presidential Innovation Fund which has seen many universities including WUA walking away with impressive awards in innovation.
POTRAZ has been conducting Innovation drives in form of hackathons and ideathones since 2020. Some of us in ICT-related academic work have participated as judges and facilitators of the various endevours. We have seen impressive technologies being deployed by young people. Noteworthy ones being the Julia AI office assistant by David Chifunyise et al, and Timothy Kuhamba Stellar Aspirations among other greats.
Other green shoots include Old Mutual's 825 Innovation Hub which conducts annual hackathons e.g. Arduino day hackathons and the Hairtronics which is a workshop series for women during the women's month of March. They also sponsor the Nextgen Anchors Club which is a youth empowerment program which takes them through technical skills such as robotics and soft skills. Talking about the importance of soft skills, I was impressed to hear Arthur mentioning the need for soft skills, personal development and entrepreneurial skills. This is he said is what makes an innovator complete with technical and soft skills.
Given the growing interest in AI, the government programs and the green shoots of AI innovation that we see in tech hubs and hackathons and ideathons. I guess my takeaway lesson is to call for a Multi-disciplinary approach to AI adaptation and deployment. The diverse mosaic of experts that attended Prof Mutambara's book launch compels me to wonder why our universities are not reflecting the same diversity of experts who are interested in AI. As I walk down the corridors, chair conferences and review journal I see think walls barring academics from multidisciplinary collaboration. Some disciplines are content with using it but few ever take part in the development of AI. It is unrealistic for Zimbabwe to expect to harness the power of AI by relegating it to the technological geeks alone. Life is too multifaceted to be tackled by one discipline alone. Development itself is as multi-dimensional it consists of the social, the technical and commercial aspects that call for all academics to come together.
Our journals and conferences must consider encouraging articles that are authored by people from different disciplines. I encourage my intellectual peers to buy Prof Mutambara’s book, read it and continue with the discussion on development and AI. The content is great and the book launch was powerful, the best since 2009 when I attended Amartya Sen’s launch of his magnum opus entitled ‘The Idea of Justice’ at Oxford University’s great hall. Just Prof John Wood joked that Sen’s book did better than ones written by footballers’ wives, I must say that prof Mutambara’s Artificial Intelligence a driver for inclusive development and shared prosperity for the global South obviously did better that his books on politics.
Sam Takavarasha Jr is Director of the Research Postgraduate and innovation Centre