Google is opening its first AI research center in Africa

Google announced yesterday in a blog post that it will open an artificial intelligence (AI) research center in Accra, Ghana. The AI center is scheduled to open later this year. It will be Google’s first AI center on the African continent. Other African cities including Addis Ababa, Kigali and Lagos have also been pushing their credentials as tech hubs. Google chose Ghana because of its high quality education system and political stability, according to the expert in the region.

“Today, we’re announcing a Google AI research center in Africa, which will open later this year in Accra, Ghana. We’ll bring together top machine learning researchers and engineers in this new center dedicated to AI research and its applications,” Google said.

Over the past 10 years, Google has been opening offices in Africa. According to Google, about 10 million Africans will benefit from our digital skills training program with 2 million people having already completed the course, and Google is supporting 100,000 developers and over 60 tech startups through our Launchpad Accelerator Africa. Google is also adapting its products to make it easy for people to discover the best of the internet, even on low-RAM smartphones or unstable network connections.

“We’re committed to collaborating with local universities and research centers, as well as working with policy makers on the potential uses of AI in Africa. On a personal note, both of the authors have ties to Africa—Jeff spent part of his childhood in Uganda and Somalia, and Moustapha grew up in Senegal. As such, we’re excited to combine our research interests in AI and machine learning and our experience in Africa to push the boundaries of AI while solving challenges in areas such as healthcare, agriculture, and education,” Google said in a blog post.

There has been an increasing interest in machine learning research across African continent. In 2017, Data Science Africa 2017 was held in Tanzania. There was also the 2017 Deep Learning Indaba event in South Africa. Recently in 2018, Deep Learning IndabaX events were held in multiple countries have shown an exciting and continuing growth of the computer science research community in Africa.

The new AI center in Accra will join the list of other locations where Google focus on AI, including Paris, Zurich, Tokyo, Beijing, Montreal, Toronto, Seattle, Cambridge/Boston, Tel Aviv/Haifa, New York, and our Mountain View/San Francisco headquarters. Google currently has two open positions for machine learning researchers interested in joining the new AI center in Ghana. You can apply as a Research Scientist  by visiting https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/google/research-scientist-google-brain-accra-ghana-3962950079&. or a Research Software Engineer by vising https://careers.google.com/jobs#!t=jo&jid=/google/software-engineer-research-and-machine-accra-ghana-3961850055&