Chilekwa Banda: “Africa Needs to Make Use of Existing Digital Solutions”
For the second time, Russia’s Global Digital Forum is bringing together experts from around the world to discuss how digital technology can benefit humanity as a whole and help narrow the technology gap.
Chilekwa Banda, chief operating officer at Bridging Solutions and a board member of the International Association for the Digital Economy from Zambia, spoke to an IT Russia correspondent about the challenges Africa faces in achieving digital sovereignty:
– My impressions of the forum’s first day are excellent. I think the topics have been chosen very well. We understand that all these issues could have a major impact on African countries. The digital agenda being discussed here is highly relevant. Representatives from a wide range of countries have also come to the forum.
This gives us an opportunity to learn a great deal through the discussions and, rather than reinventing the wheel, make use of digital solutions that already exist.
One of the most important and interesting topics for me was digital twins of cities. We had a panel discussion on this subject, and it was fascinating to see how existing technologies can be used to accelerate digital development. This is something we can do in Zambia. We can explore how to digitize different processes and how the government can put various technologies to use.
For example, I was very interested to learn how vehicles can be tracked in cities and so on. As I said, rather than reinventing the wheel, why not adopt and use solutions that already exist in Russia or, for example, Morocco? Our colleagues shared their experience with us.
Another important issue is the development of artificial intelligence. We discussed opportunities for cooperation between African countries and the Russian government. You have accumulated a vast body of knowledge, and we know that Moscow is home to many universities. It would be very useful for us to learn from you how AI and related technologies can be applied.
In Africa, we lack this level of expertise, so we need to build our knowledge of digital technologies and then share it with other regions as well.
That is why learning about your digitalization agenda has been very useful. We are now exploring opportunities to introduce these technologies in our own country.
