Professor at Carnegie Mellon University Pittsburgh
All Sessions by Prof. Dr. Allen Robinson
26 April
Day 1
WEDNESDAY
15:00
Spotlight Session by CMU-Africa
15:00 - 16:00
Professor Allen Robinson, CMU-Africa’ Director will be joined by a CMU-Africa alumna Victoria Munguti, who was also a beneficiary of a Smart Africa scholarship.
This session's spotlight will be an opportunity to learn more about how CMU-Africa is working to advance Africa’s intellectual and digital development as well as hear from a young innovator on how they are working to increase diaspora inflows into the East African market.
CMU-Africa was established in 2011 through a partnership between Carnegie Mellon and the Government of Rwanda. This ambitious and innovative partnership was designed to respond to the critical shortage of high-quality engineering talent required to harness Rwanda and Africa’s tremendous potential as home to the fastest growing workforce in the world. Its graduates are the next generation of technology leaders across Africa, solving African and global challenges through contextually relevant research and developing tech entrepreneurs focused on local and African challenges. CMU-Africa is the only U.S. research university offering its master’s degrees with a full-time faculty, staff, and operations in Africa.
Sponsored by:
Connect
Where
Kalala Room
27 April
Day 2
THURSDAY
14:30
Future of work - new industries driven by technology
14:30 - 15:30
Technological advancements have entirely reshaped the organizations but also changing the nature of work. Innovation will continue to accelerate and creating opportunities, paving the way for new and altered jobs, increasing productivity, and improving the delivery of public services. With the COVID-19 pandemic that projected loss of over 200million jobs across the world, and this estimated a total of 38 million jobs lost in the eastern African region only. This shows that in order to earn and thrive in a post-COVID world requires immediate attention and re-skill and up-skill our youth, citizens and decision makers.
Digital skills development is more than ever at the heart of Africa’s current and future socio-economic development in Africa in order to leapfrog the benefits of digital transformation. In addition to being the second most populous continent in the world after Asia, Africa has also the youngest population, with more than 1.3 billion people. This panel will discuss the future of workplace, policies that are needed
Innovate
Transform
Where
Kalala Room
16:00
Leveraging AI to address climate change challenges in Africa
16:00 - 17:00
The Smart Africa Secretariat, together with FAIR Forward, has established an AI Working Group to develop an "Artificial Intelligence for Africa" blueprint that identifies potential solutions to be implemented in the Smart Africa Alliance. The blueprint defines a roadmap for Member States to strive for a more open, inclusive, and sustainable approach to AI while being compliant and competitive with international standards. The Smart Africa Secretariat has entered the "pilot level" phase, providing technical support to Member States in developing their own National AI Strategy, developing concrete pilot projects, and organizing capacity building workshops based on the "Artificial Intelligence for Africa" blueprint. The Innovate Africa Challenge is planned to provide an opportunity for startups and entrepreneurs to develop innovative ideas on how AI can be leveraged to address specific development challenges in Africa, with the first edition implemented together with FAIR Forward and focusing on "AI for climate change." The objectives of the session include raising awareness about the challenge, opportunities of AI to mitigate and adapt to climate change in Africa and gaining potential additional sponsors from the private sector.
