ICTworks is a San Francisco-based organization “for international development professionals committed to utilizing new and emerging technologies to magnify the intent of communities to accelerate their social and economic development,” it states. It's a .org partnership Inveneo, FHI 360,TechChange, and IntraHealth International.

A recent report identified four key areas in which nations in Africa could benefit from the oncoming age of AI and quantum computing, which it refers to as quantum machine learning (QML): banking and finance, social networks, cybersecurity, and healthcare.

Banking & Finance. The report lists several areas in serving customers where the learning abilities of AI and QML can improve customer experiences and financial services companies operations. “Furthermore, since AI and QML can fluently analyze data and give accurate results through algorithms, it can help to forecast risks in loans which can improve the long-term growth of industries, thus developing the economy,” the report says.

Social networks. The report notes that, with the additional use of IoT deployments and blockchain, QML “can create a secure network to improve efficiency in systems that contain large data and also provide reliable data protection schemes.Industries in Africa could also use these technologies to recognize emerging customer trademarks and keep track of social mentions to identify approaches for better social media promotions,” it says.

Cybersecurity. “AI can be used in the 4IR to strengthen cybersecurity in Africa by detecting data breaches to remove unwanted data or malware from systems being developed to lower the cyber-attack,” the report says. It notes AI's use in biometric authentication. Backed by QML, systems can also “assist in storage and performance challenges, wherever systems contain large data, and also build systems that will transform current security initiatives, such as quantum sensors, quantum radars, and location detection.”

Healthcare. The report outlines the use of digital technology in healthcare today to diagnose patients, monitor multiple patients simultaneously, analyze data from past procedures, and evaulat existing data to make predictions about infection rates. All of these things “could improve health facilities in Africa,” it states.

The full report can be found at ICTworks.org.