okay and um for those who have just joined uh my name is evangeline arithwala and i'm the alumni engagement officer with the csc alumni team um today today's webinars format will be will include a presentation by a speaker who i will introduce very shortly followed by a q a session after the presentation today's webinar is on the topic machine learning blockchain technology and sustainable development in africa um and presenting this webinar today we have with us commonwealth alumnus faithful chiagozine uh on onward um a brief introduction about faithful faithful is uh currently pursuing his phd in machine learning and blockchain technology um at the sfi center for research training in machine learning at the university of dublin he has over five years of work experience gained as a data scientist machine learning and blockchain researcher a teacher community developer and a leader in several projects faithful will provide detailed information about himself uh he's created a really good uh deck of slides uh which also includes a good introduction about himself so i will uh let him do a introduction on himself but also to let you know that uh faithful has been a uh has served as the west scotland regional network coordinator during his time as a commonwealth scholar faithful is a 2019 commonwealth shared scholar from nigeria and he's he has completed his msc in financial technology which is fintech at the university of stirling so our faithful thank you so much for joining us today and uh sharing your expertise on this uh really uh interesting topic i would now leave the flow to you for your presentation thank you so much i really appreciate that uh wonderful introduction thank you eva thank you for for everything you've done to ensure that this session you know is wonderful so thank you i just want to welcome everybody to this session can you hear me clearly please yes all right loud and clear exactly so just want to say thank you to everybody for joining in um i'm really excited to be here you know it's not uh it's really a great privilege for me to have received the invitation by the commonwealth scholarship commission to give this talk on machine learning blockchain technology and sustainable development in africa now these are topics that are you know passion that i'm very very much passionate about so i hope i don't over talk i hope i you know stay calm and and deliver a good uh webinar so once again thank you for joining just a little brief introduction about myself so as you've heard my name is faith fuchsia i studied mathematician statistics at the ignatius at jury university of education in nigeria so i graduated in 2014 with a first class honours and as the best graduating student and then i proceeded to pan-african university kenya you know with funding from the african union to do research in financial mathematics and then in 2019 i was privileged to be awarded the commonwealth's shield scholarship and i obtain an msc in financial technology at the university of sterling uk so currently i'm with the sfi center for research training in machine learning at the university college dublin so there i'm undertaking the phd studies in machine learning and blockchain technology so i'm going to tell you more about my research as we go along you know in the talk so that's a little introduction about myself and so for the table of content today you know the things we are going to be covering is that we will start with a wide wing tour of the fourth industrial revolution so we talk about the different four industrial revolutions and then we look at the concept of machine learning and blockchain technology and after doing that we'll see how machine learning and blockchain technology is currently being used so during this time i'm also going to be saying how africa can also use machine learning during that time also then i would majorly highlight few sectors because this is just a 40 minutes to when i talk i can cover i can possibly cover all the ways in which uh you know blockchain technology and machine learning can be used in sustainable development in fact there are no other ways that we can use this technology that no one knows yet that's why we have innovative people here you know thinking and you know bringing up different solutions so i'll do my best to highlight some few key areas you know how machine learning and blockchain technology can be used for sustainable development of africa and then i'll look at very few you know future of machine learning and blockchain technology and the conclusion and they will be done okay and then i will take your questions so uh first of all with the fourth industrial revolution you know we've heard this term a lot you know going to conferences you yeah for ir as i spoke you know it's popularly called you know and first of all i want us to understand that revolution denotes an abrupt abrupt and radical change you know according to claus shewerb uh he he made you know a statement that revolution occurs when new technologies and novel ways of perceiving the world trigger a profound change in economic systems and social structure so if we think back as far back years thousands of years ago during the agrarian revolution what we saw was that there was the domestication of animals and then we could now use the horse you know in our agricultural processes you know that led to we also use the horses for transportations you know so that that led to improvement in the production it led to improvement in transportation and also in communication so we saw that in the agrarian revolution where we tried to domesticate animals and combine them with you know human and or manual power it led improvement in you know production it led improvement in our processes and then we according to to claire shiweb we can distinctly divide the industrial revolution you know to begin in the 1700s by the invention of the steam engine so when the steam engine was invented in the 1700s you know it triggered it was you know it triggered improvement in transportation so and then we had the rail systems uh through the development of the steam engine it also improved mechanical production so these improvement in the first you know industrial revolution it's changed it's radically changed you know the societa you know uh it led to economic radical changes and then we went to the second industrial revolution which we saw in around the 1800s to the 1900s uh which was triggered by the invention of electricity right and then it also was triggered by the invention of the assembly line so then we could have mass production so if you think about the electricity invention and what the second industrial revolution did was that it it's radically changed the first revolution in the sense that it brought to us what we call mass production now okay and the rise of also cities you know and then the third industrial revolution was around 1900 you know we saw you know the development of computers right around the 1900s and then we also saw the mainframe computer being developed in 1960s personal computer developed in 1970s and 1980s and the internet was you know invented in the 1990s now this invention okay which it triggered a lot of things actually you know we now have more improved communication through the enablement of the social media we have now the facebook the emails the gmails and the and the likes you see and then we also have the target marketing you know by new and also the creation of new marketplaces in amazon airbnb and the like so these now created what we call the third industrial revolution right and some persons would argue that the fourth industrial revolution is nothing different than the third you know but as many would note is that we are experiencing another radical change okay we are experiencing radical change and these you know it's it's characterized by you know a much more ubiquitous and mobile internet it's also characterized by you know more powerful sensors you know that have become cheaper and also by they are also part of artificial intelligence and you know machine learning so this fought industrial revolution that we are in right now from the f from all the revolutions we can picture a specific lesson there's a lesson we can gain from all the different revolutions i just mentioned now is that according to clious schweb he said steel valley today is the lesson from the first industrial revolution that's the extent to which society embraces technological innovation is a major determinant of progress so for societies to progress they have to adopt these new technologies in driving that progress in driving that development and also mitigate the risks associated with the use of these technologies now there are several technologies currently that are driving this fourth industrial revolution i will not pretend to say that i'm going to cover all of these technologies no so we have like the internet of things we have additive manufacturing we have cyber physical systems we have industrial communication networks we have quantum computing we have several different technologies that are driving the fort industrial revolution but for the sake of this talk i'm just going to be highlighting two of them machine learning and blockchain technology so i will start now by saying what is machine learning you know but before i really define you know or give a meaning to the term blockchain and what is machine learning i would like to say that traditionally humans have you know i've always we've always been able to analyze data now take for example the farmer that you know needs to count his or half you know livestock and you want to count the livestock so that you know the number of feeds to buy so that you know you know you know how to transport your livestock you know humans have always been able to analyze data but when data becomes so large as we are having currently once data becomes so large it becomes very difficult for humans to analyze the data now let us look at uh one minute on the internet in 2021 so in just one minute just 60 seconds in 2021 according to statista in just one minute we have 69 million messages sent on on uh facebook messenger and on whatsapp in just 60 seconds we have 197.6 million emails sent we have 500 hours of content uploaded to the youtube we have 1.6 million usd spent online in just 60 seconds in just 60 seconds we have 695 000 stories shared on instagram so you can see from this that currently we are we are generating enormous amount of data and the data we are generating are not just numeric data we are generating text data we are generating audio data we are generating video data we are generating pictures we are generating data with different types other than what we are always used to which are the numbers and possibly you know text files now the development of all this means that the traditional means of analyzing this data becomes very difficult so there is need now for a different way or a different approach of analyzing this data now this brings us to what we call machine learning now there are different terms flying around over there we have machine learning we have artificial intelligence and we have deep learning okay so but for the sake of this talk i'm just going to be using machine learning to denote any of these right so artificial intelligence is seen like you know it's it's just an umbrella term that denotes you know the theory and development of computer systems that are able to perform tax that normally requires human intelligence so the development of intelligent you know agents or intelligent machines that can perform tax just like humans will that's what we call artificial intelligence in broad terms but machine learning actually now is a branch or a sub is a branch of artificial intelligence that seeks to teach machines how to learn and perform tasks that humans can perform without being explicitly programmed to do so think about traditional software engineering if you want the computer to perform a specific task you have to tell the computer the specific tax to perform but currently with machine learning you can teach the machine you know and then the machine will be able to learn and perform that tax without being explicitly programmed to do so and deep learning is just a branch of machine learning now you know and it seeks to mimic the functioning of the human brain so what really happens in machine learning you have a data now this data can be any type of data it can be a numeric data it can be a text data it can be you know your picture from your social media it can be the text you wrote on your tweet it can be any type of data so i'm just giving a high level process now there are other sub processes that are hidden just for the sake of simplicity so what you need to do before training actually the other processes like training like you know preparation data cleaning data wrangling and all that but just for the sake of simplicity okay so after you get your data you clean your data you prepare your data you make it ready for training you feed this in training what we mean is that you're feeding this data to the machine learning algorithm and the machine learning algorithm would you know try to learn the patterns of that data and in learning the patterns of that data the machine learning algorithm will come up with a model now this model will be tested to see if it is it's doing exactly what you want it to do and when you test it and you find that it is doing exactly what you want it to do then you deploy now in deploying it it may be that you want to answer some questions it may be that you want to make predictions it may be that you want to make recommendations of the next movie to watch it may be that you want to classify if a person if a specific patient has malaria or not okay so this is just a high level understanding of what machine learning is and it may not seem so but machine learning is currently being used in several ways you know around us in several several ways just around us machine learning actually is everywhere it is everywhere you know and i'm talking about this i'm also going to be highlighting how african can also tap into machine learning in your image and your voice recognition systems you know machine learning is being used you know in developing image and voice recognition systems right now you can you can talk to siri and say hi siri set an alarm for 2 pm and siri will set an alarm for 2 pm for you what is making that possible is by the help of machine learning okay all right so right now also to we have image recognition you can upload your face your your picture on facebook and you know facebook will be able to detect that this person the person on this picture is faithful child goes how was facebook able out of all the millions of people on facebook able to detect that uh the person on this photo is faithful is by the use of machine learning so machine learning is also being used in several other ways really we have your language translation you want to translate your language from swahili to uh english okay habariako in swahili you want to find what is the meaning of a bariatro in english you're using your google translate but google translate underneath it is being built with machine learning also we have different uh like also we have your predictive analytics okay say for example you want to understand the stock that you need to buy you want to understand okay if your your internet your network is being infiltrated by you know a cyber attacker so you want to be able to also predict you know would most likely win a game maybe your favorite team is playing you want to be able to predict if your favorite item will win a game you also want to be able to you know predict you know the the health risk factors of different people all these are being done currently using machine learning also in machine learning there's also what we call you know recommended systems so recommended systems so we have situations whereby you go on amazon and you want to buy a specific item and amazon would recommend to you and tell you that you know a person that purchased a book also purchased a pen so those recommendations are done using machine learning you also go to on netflix and you want to watch a movie and you know recommendations are also being made to you okay those that watch this movie also saw this other movie so maybe you're going to be interested in it so all these recommendations are being made possible by machine learning we also have virtual assistants beat virtual as trading assistant right now if you want to trade the financial markets you can use a machine learning model to help you trade the financial market automatically we also see that machine learning is being used for sentiment analysis now in sentiment analysis basically you're trying to find out the the emotions that have been expressed on the text you see how do you know if a tweet is positive or a tweet is negative or a tweet is nutra without reading the tweet yourself so for all these applications machine learning is currently being used in doing all this so i know right now i have really spent a lot of time talking about what is machine learning how is currently being used so i will move to the other part of our talk which is blockchain technology okay so blockchain now is a shared immutable ledger that facilitates process of recording transactions and tracking assets in a business network now what do i mean basically i simply mean that a blockchain is a distressed decentralized ledger just like you have your school records you have your school ledger this ledger is a decentralized ledger in which every node in the network every node in the network contain the same information on the same transactions and these transactions are verified using cryptographic you know functions and timestamp now blockchain was invented by you know an unknown person well we would say an unknown person or group of persons you know caught satoshi nakamoto you know in 2008 and we saw that uh it was through the invention of the the bitcoin you know and then he released his white paper uh that he described you know bitcoin as a peer-to-peer you know electronic cash system now due to this many people erroneously think that when we talk about blockchain then we are basically talking about bitcoin and we are talking about only cryptocurrencies actually bitcoin is one of the successful applications of the blockchain technology or you can say in general cryptocurrency we've seen that they are one of the successful applications of the blockchain technology but however they are not the only the blockchain technology can be used in several ways as i'm going to highlight here now what is the simple idea here the blockchain tries to eliminate the middleman now think for it think think about this for me to send money from where i am now in ireland to somebody that is in nigeria i have to go or through several middlemen really when i'm making that transaction there are people in the middle of the transaction that ensure that the transaction is safe and that ensure that this transaction gets to the right person and for doing this they take what is called their charges really and sometimes it can be very very expensive you know remittances but in the blockchain now what it does is to remove the middleman and allow me to you know transact with another peer probably in nigeria without the need for any intermediary and do it also in a secure way so that's what a high level understanding of what you know blockchain is all about now how does the blockchain work okay so for example let's say a person wants to make a request for a transaction now maybe that transaction is to transfer a specific amount of cryptocurrency or a specific value it can be anything the value here can actually be anything so a person you know probably make you know makes a request for a transaction now this request would be broadcasted you know you know this request that a person makes you know it will form what we call you know a block so it's a block will be created that contains this request then this block will be you know shared you know or broadcasted in the nodes in the network and every node in this network will then you know validate that you know the the the transaction that is being asked to be added to the block you know it's a valid transaction it's a valid uh value that's been shared and everything and then when you know these different nodes have you know validated it the block will be added to the chain and then the transaction will be verified and executed so this is just like a high-level you know process you know in which transactions get added to the chain now there are several ways in which the blockchain technology is currently being used other than cryptocurrency okay now uh according to peter peter tried to you know keep you know just try to divide all these processes in four key areas you know one of it is the digital currency so we can see that blockchain technology is being used for e-commerce we can see that blockchain technology is used in peer-to-peer lending is used for macro finance is used for global payments also blockchain technology can be used for record keeping so you want to for example have you know keep a title for your your your landed property you want to keep a a a title for maybe a particular asset that you have blockchain technology is being used in that way also in blockchain technology are what we call smart contracts and this smart contracts basically what they ensure is that they ensure that when we agreed to do a specific thing that that thing is being done without us being you know going in between the process trying to execute it ourselves the contract will be executed automatically once we meet certain specific you know conditions as specified by the contract now we can also see that blockchain technology is being used for crowdfunding to raise credits and all that so blockchain technology is being used in several of these ways and africa can also use blockchain technology in these ways also we can use that and i'm going to share a little about that you know in the next slides now i'll pause a bit now to talk about how africa can utilize these technologies for sustainable development okay now first of all there's something we need to note about africa and that is that africa is blessed with enormous human and material resources we also need to affirm that africa according to statista 2022 is that africa is the continent with the youngest population worldwide and for this fourth industrial revolution according to player shiweb more than ever before for this in this fourth industrial revolution he said that he is convinced of wanting that in the future talent more than capital will represent the critical factor of production so africa we have the young people we have the talented people as we all know talent is evenly distributed but opportunities are not so this talk right now will be so for us as africans the best that we have is our young people and we need to see how we can equip them with this knowledge so that they in turn can then develop africa and give us the africa that we want so we all know about the sustainable development goals i believe i'm talking to most commonwealth scholars and this is what we do so before just for the sake of completeness sustainable development you know is just that development that meets the current needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations you know to meet their own needs so in essence you can really say that you know a sustainable sustainable development project is that that is economically viable socially inclusive and environmentally friendly and we know that there are several of these goals you know united nations have listed several of these goals and like gold one which is no poverty go for which is quality education go five gender equality go thirteen which is climate action uh go 16 being peace and justice uh you know and strong institutions go 17 being partnership to achieve you know the goals and also africa we came out together and we also asked ourselves what is the future we want for ourselves and we tried to document this in the africa agenda 2063 so we said that by 2063 africa should have achieved all this number one aspiration we have is that we want to build a prosperous africa that is based on inclusive growth and sustainable development we also aspiration 4 says we want to build a peaceful and secure africa in when we look at the aspiration 7 you know we want to be with africa that is strong united in an influential global player and partner so for us to do this we then need to harness the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution however yes in achieving uh our goals so i'm just gonna go to the next slide now okay so how can africa utilize blockchain for sustainable development now there are several ways in which africa can use blockchain i would not be able to cover every way possible that we can use it because i don't even know all the ways there are innovative ways that we can use this technology that nobody has currently used that is why we need young people in the sector to think innovatively and use innovative techniques in in achieving the sustainable development but one of the key areas in which we can use blockchain is for financial inclusion and creating new marketplaces so we've seen that some central banks in africa are moving for central bank-based digital currencies we could see that recently nigeria you know released or launched what they call the e-naira which is a digital representation of the fed currency the nigerian naira and what this helps is that it helps in cross-border payments it helps in cross-border payment it reduces the friction in transferring you know money from one person to the other and also blockchain technology can help us you know in crowdfunding there are several innovative young people you go around you know innovation hubs you will see several innovative projects that young africans have proposed but sometimes the limiting factor is that they don't have the funding for these projects so blockchain technology can be used to create a platform in which we can do crowdfunding for the best ideas ideas that would help in solving problems in the communities okay so blockchain can also help us you know in you know creating capital for those that need capital just as i said in using crowd you know funding also with blockchain we can create new marketplaces just like you you've heard i know most persons have heard about the the non-fungible token market the nft market the nfd here meaning non-fungible token so this is just a place where you you have your non-fungible assets you know in non-fungible here now i mean i i mean you know a an asset that is unique to you an asset that is unique that you want to trade you can trade it on the nft market and then you have you know you create wealth for yourself and also create value in the system also one of the biggest ideas that came up of recent in africa and from the african union was the african center continental free trade agreement which you know was one of the flagship projects of the agenda 2063 the africa we want and the single idea of this africa continental free trade area is that we want to create africa that trades amongst itself currently the population of africa is over 1.2 billion people so imagine if 1.2 billion people are trading amongst
themselves you know it will create a lot of value it will create a lot of jobs it will create a lot of you know a lot of things that we we we've not seen you know before because currently we've seen that uh most african countries we do not trade amongst ourselves so we want to boost each african trade blockchain technology can be used to help us trade amongst ourselves to to help us pay you know for goods and services are across borders in a secure manner there are other ways in which blockchain technology can be used it can also be used in the healthcare system now i'm not going to talk about this so much but i would just like you to note that there is a problem of drug counterfeiting according to the world health organization as many as one in 10 medical products circulating in developing countries as substandard or falsified now this is even worse when you think about it in the in the african context according to w ho they said of all the fake drugs that are reported to the who between 2013 and 2017 42 percent of the reports came from the african region so we seen that most of the the drugs that are being used or sold in africa are fake or you know falsified drugs and people are taking this drug hoping that they will get better and they are not getting better and people are dying so what can we do is that we can ensure that we can use blockchain technology to improve the traceability of these drugs we can develop platforms in which whenever a drug is manufactured it is being registered on the blockchain the process of that drug leaving the manufacturing office to the wholesaler to the retailer to the to the pharmacist and to the consumer can all be recorded on a blockchain and since the blockchain ensures that uh you know transaction has been recorded cannot be deleted then would have what we call traceability so these are is also one of the ways in which we can use blockchain i'm gonna you know run through this now we all know this problem so well the problem of elections you know when it's election time everybody is out there promising you know all that they can promise and at the end of the day we don't see most of those things being delivered you know chinua achebe said something in the nigerian context when he wrote his classic book called the trouble with nigeria in the first chapter of that book the first paragraph the first sentence chino achebe made was that the trouble with nigeria is simply and squarely a failure of leadership that there's no problem with the nigerian people there's no problem with the nigerian you know land and anything just is just a failure of leadership now blockchain cannot train leaders blockchain cannot you know give us good leaders but blockchain can ensure that if we vote on the blockchain it can ensure that the desired candidate that we are voting for is the desired candidate that would get that office all right so there are other ways in which you can use blockchain technology also in education there is also a lot of certificate fraud in which many people are carrying certificates that they did not you know achieve themselves but with the blockchain technology we can ensure that every certificate is you know recorded on the blockchain and it will not be able it will not be changed and through that we can track and see if a person is saying that they've gone to this school and that school we can track and find out if really they did now there is a big case of this back going right now in nigeria where people you know conversing for political offices you know they are trying to see did they have the certificate or not and all that but if we you know have this certificate uploaded and recorded on the blockchain that those issues will not be there now there's also we can also use the blockchain technology in land management uh you know currently there are also several issues around land ownership in africa whereby you can buy land like ten or five times you know you can buy a land that has already been bought you know three times and five times and then you go to the courts trying to prove that you're the owner of that land not knowing that 10 other persons have already bought the same property but with the blockchain technology we can be able to trace this if we have all the land system you know on a blockchain technology we know that how the land has been changing the ownership so at any point in time you will know the original and the true owner of a specific property now there are other ways it can be used okay for law enforcement using smart contract i think i said a little bit about this you know previously now i would not say you know these are just few highlights of how we can use blockchain technology to develop you know africa or to achieve sustainable development so now i'll move to machine learning now it's hard really really very hard to talk about these two technologies in one webinar session but i hope uh i will just give those high ideas out there and i believe that most of us can pick it up from there so one of the ways we can use machine learning and one of the ways machine learning is also currently being used remember there was a slide that i had where i talked about how machine learning is currently being used we can also use those same ways in improving africa okay but one of the ways we see is in business development okay so probably you have a business idea and you want to scale this idea you want to be able to understand your market for you to be able to understand your market and be able to predict how many persons would be interested in this product you know where are they going to be coming from what region of the country would be interested in this product you want to do target market you want to do targeted marketing for you to do targeted marketing and personal personalized marketing you need to use the you know machine learning in all these processes also there's also language in africa we have we are blessed with lots of lovely languages but these languages are going extinct you know and we need to develop you know machine learning models i'll be able to translate languages from one language to the other i know that there are some languages that are currently being captured by you know probably google translate means the major languages in africa you know like the swahili igbo house and all that but there are also some low resource level languages you know that are not being captured at the moment so we as africans we need to think of ways in which we can capture this to ensure that our heritage is not lost and there are several researchers working in this area uh and if you want to you know work in this area you can reach out to me i can link you up to several researchers currently looking at this you know also machine learning can be used for predictive analytics i said a lot about this in the previous slide and those things still hold true for africa we can use it for predictive analytics we can use it for precision medicine we can also use it for agriculture think about agriculture and think about all the processes of of agriculture and think about the the the goals of you know no poverty think about the goals of food security think about all those goals machine learning can be used for agricultural processes be it in the livestock in ensuring that the crops are you know healthy in predicting diseases in uh in livestock be it in the in the financial aspect of the business in predicting also the the sales of a specific uh product in the marketplace how the market is going to respond to a specific product if the customers are going to like it these you know uh processes can be done using machine learning in as much as we have the data so also in manufacturing we can make use of machine learning we can make use of machine learning in fintech and we already seen that being you know done already we have africa it has a very rich fintech ecosystem currently and we can we can see the big players there you know making use of machine learning you know in predicting who gets a loan in predicting who would default to a specific loan and know who is the best person to to to give a loan which is also increasing the economic activity in africa so there are other ways in which we can use machine learning climate modeling really you can use we can use machine learning if we have the data to predict you know what would be the temperature of nairobi in 10 years time what would be the the uh for example what would be the sea level rise in uh in uh tanzania in 50 years time from now we can use machine learning to predict all this climate change you know issues and from that make better policies make better decisions on how to save our planet all right so i'll talk a little bit about my research i can see that i'm running out of time already so i'm going to skip through this uh i'll talk about this just in a short while so what i'm working on currently is that i'm trying to use or apply machine learning and blockchain technology in finance and cyber security so these are my areas that i'm working on so basically what i'm trying to do i'm trying to work in the area where i detect financial fraud i also build you know secure financial system and then through that increase financial inclusion according to one of the one of the aspirations of the african agenda 2063 is uh uh is to build you know an africa that is peaceful and that is secure and we cannot be talking about security in this day and age if you're not talking about cyber security we cannot also be talking about development if we're not talking about economic development so my research basically is in this intersection of machine learning and blockchain technology applied in finance and cyber security i'm also looking at other areas but these are my major areas but for my current research right now i'm working in what we call the ransomware attack now around somewhere is a computer virus that is developed you know and spread out you know around you know in a network and what happens is that when people click on this you know malicious files and they are downloaded on the system it corrupts the system it locks the system it blocks the system or does some malicious things on the system and then demands for a ransom and most of this ransom are demanded using cryptocurrencies so we could see that a technology that can be used for good can also be used for evil so what my research seeks to do is to ensure that this technology is used in the right way and then those that will try to want to use it in the wrong way are being stopped so we can see this that in south africa just recently there was a ransomware attack you know in in shop right now africa is not alone in this in uh in just last year 2020 may 2021 and the irish you know uh health system was attacked by sophisticated ransomware and then you know in 2017 nhs in the uk was attacked by a ransomware and it cost them you know 92 million pounds us is all has also been attacked by ransomware attack you know the colonial pipeline was attacked by ransomware and it cost them 5 million you know to pay for a ransom to release to get their files so i am trying to work in this area and to see how machine learning in our blockchain can be used to secure systems to secure networks to make you know our systems more secure so one of the challenges i'll just run through this now because i'm running out of time so one of the challenges we possibly see in machine learning is that we need to machine learning you can be doing machine learning if you don't have data and right now we are moving to what we call data centric ai or data centric machine learning which is being popularized by andrew eng now data centric machine learning seeks to have quality data we need to have quality data we need to have data that reflect the african context and for us to do so we need to create data infrastructure so these are one of the challenges and for us to solve it every all the government and even we as people we need to see how we can create data infrastructure if you have a business then you should be thinking about how to create data infrastructure to store those data and use the data ethically and that's where the next thing comes in bias and discrimination most times when machine learning models have been developed it's one it's one way or the other has effect in the society so we need to develop machine learning models and systems that are not harmful to society that does not amplify the bias and the discrimination that is already existing in society so these are one of the challenges uh and that we we see in the sector also for blockchain some blockchain technology can be energy you know they can consume a lot of energy and then when we are you know conversing for sustainable energy we need to develop blockchain you know that are also energy efficient and there are several works in this already but for the both cases one of the challenges we are having is regulations most times those are giving regulations you know for this for the for the use of these technologies are not really conversant with these technologies so sometimes they give strict regulations that hinders the development of the sector or they give uh loose regulations that increases or amplifies the risks of using these technologies so we need to have adequate regulations that promotes innovative applications of these technologies and also reduces the risks of this technology also we also need to have regulations that are ethical you know that ensures that these technologies are used in ethical way in trustworthy and inclusive manner another big thing that we need to look about is education we need to educate there's currently a digital divide we all know this i don't need to go over this there's currently a digital divide so we need to see how we can train more people you know in this area so that they also can ensure the africa that we want well i'll be saying yeah just running through this i think one of the future of machine learning that i see is the use of machine learning in almost every sector now i'm not going to go into the jargons of the technical machine learning dragons and the technical future of machine learning because that may not be helpful to most of the participants here since most of us are not in the machine learning space but what i can say is that machine learning would be used in almost every sector so think about any sector that you have you know you know you you think about whereby data can be generated then machine learning can be used to improve the processes and the services so we are also thinking about is the time when the machine learning models themselves will be able to do what we call automatic machine learning or auto machine learning whereby from the the beginning point to the end point everything will just be done by the machine themselves the machine learning should be able to also develop you know uh uh uh uh you know write its own code and all that but i don't want to go into the technical details because that would be too technical so but in the blockchain side of things we see that there's going to be nobel marketplaces that will be created more than what we are currently seeing now we are going to see the development of novel marketplaces we're also going to be seeing the development of more sustainable blockchains blockchain that are energy efficient well i think since i've taken much time i'll say in conclusion i will try to reiterate the words of klaus shewa which said that we which he said that is convinced of one thing that in the future talent modern capital will represent the critical factor of production so right now africa is blessed to be you know having the largest uh young population in the world we have the young talent talents are evilly distributed opportunities are not we need to ensure that we we take this knowledge and you know train the young eager you know vibrant africans and they would ensure the development of these technologies and the use of these technologies in the sustainable development so machine learning and blockchain it gives africa a unique opportunity to leave frog in our development and achieve sustainable development we've been left out in the first revolution second and the third and some african countries are still struggling to achieve electricity still struggling to have internet but while we are all thinking about uh still you know putting the infrastructure of the internet putting the infrastructure of electricity putting the infrastructure of you know railroads we should not forget that we also need to be key players in the development of these technologies like the machine learning and blockchain and also be key players in utilizing this technology in our own development because if we don't do it somebody will do it for us thank you so much thank you thank you so much faithful um that was a very insightful presentation on machine learning and blockchain technologies and it was really interesting to know about the ways in which the continent of africa can use these technologies to achieve sustainable development and given that you know the continent interestingly has the highest number of younger people's population uh which is always a plus point in you know adapting to technologies um i must say your webinar presentation has received uh lot of positive responses and feedback in the chat box um and this is now a time for a q a session i'd like to open the q a session but also to let you know we may uh slightly run over time uh we will take around four to five questions in the q a session however um this webinar is being recorded the recording will be made available on the csc's youtube channel and if you are keen on connecting with faithful and getting in touch with with faithful and asking any further questions that you might have please do so via linkedin as you can see they are linked in uh account detail on the uh screen uh i will also uh faithful is also uh very happy to connect with with everyone or all the congress scholars and alumni to discuss further details on this topic while the knowledge of promoting global prosperity uh so please do connect with faithful via the knowledge hub as well if you have any questions that you know we might not be able to cover today uh given the the time limit um all right faithful so i am going to uh bring two questions to you that we have received in advance to the webinar presentation via the registration form uh if you're ready with the for the q a session yes please great so the first question is um what are the risk and uh key risk anticipated in these emerging ict innovations that can derail rather than enhance the sustainable development goals in africa uh if they are not handled well oh thank you so much i think that's a very insightful question so the question simply is like what are the key rigs you know that would hamper the development the sustainable development that we are all conversing for if these technologies are not handled properly and underwear and sincerely we are seeing those risks the risk number one in using machine learning models is that you need to use data and if your data is not inclusive if your data does not capture the ideas of your society in an inclusive manner it then means that if the data is biased it means that the models you're going to be generating will be skewed towards one direction and when it's done when that is done it means that it's going to be amplifying the bias that is already existing in society so one of the ways we can do we can ensure that this is not happening is by ensuring quality data and by also ensuring that this data you know has to be checked to ensure that it is ethical it is inclusive before it is being used to develop machine learning models we've also seen that with the use of these technologies like the blockchain technology is the increased cyber attack whereas the blockchain tech the blockchain itself is secure really the the blockchain itself is secure but the platforms on which people are operating on maybe their mobile phones be it their laptops may not be secure because what is representing you is your password really on online platforms what represents you is your username and your password so if somebody can get access to your username and your password if you don't have two-factor authentication and other authentication processes being implemented the person can also claim to be you and you know go away with all your funds so as we are seeing the rise of the technology is being used we also seen that malicious users are also coming in the space increasing the cyber threats so therefore we then need to train ourselves in the proper you know in cyber security ethics and cyber security to be conscious about cyber security we also need to train ourselves by in the conscious use of these technologies there are other ways but i think i can these two suffice yeah perfect thank you so much for your response to the question um the next question is uh it's quite an interesting question uh it's around uh what are the tools and platforms to learn about machine learning and blockchain yeah that's that's a really really good question really are the tools and platforms to learn about blockchain i must say that the internet is very good in this regard but one of the ways you can possibly learn if you want to learn in a methodological in in in in in a good you know manners by going to a university like the university of sterling uk which i where i studied for my film tech and also thank commonwealth for sponsoring my education in that so if you're here you know probably those are listening to this later on you want to get a good understanding of these technologies apply to the commonwealth scholarship and then to one of the courses and go for that but then for those that are already coming with alumni really or commonwealth scholars that are not doing courses that are related to blockchain technology you know one of the ways you can learn is to go online and go to platforms like coursera edx futureland these platforms uh you know they have educational material around these topics if you want to know the specific courses that you would need to take you can just send me a message on linkedin or in linkedin most importantly and then i can share some of this with you both coursera edx you know and just using the web basically are places where you can find you know information about this yeah thank you thank you so much for sharing um the different platforms where you know we can go and access uh information on on machine learning and blockchain technology um all right we do uh we are now um it is the end of the presentation the webinar however um if attendees are leaving the presentation the webinar uh please do uh note that the webinar recording will be made available on cs's youtube channel however i'm happy to uh extend the qnssh session by five more minutes if faithful if that's all right with you uh so we can take two or two more questions from our participants is that fine with your faithful yes that's fine with me oh perfect all right um there's a question in the chat box from uh sylvia first of all um thank you for your very insightful presentation the question is um regarding the lack of existing legislation in many african countries to regulate the use of most of this technologies do you think we are ready for mass use of these technologies especially in the public sector well that's a very nice question to ask if we are ready i think uh some countries are ready some countries are not however i would like to look at it from the perspective that we can be ready even if we are not ready at the moment you know if even if those countries and some countries are not ready at the moment because probably the infrastructure is not in place the infrastructure here baits uh the internet and all that it's not in place uh one thing we can say is that we can be ready there are there are massive developments going on in africa in terms of creating this infrastructure and the policy you know decisions that needs to be take there are people in africa that are equipped with the knowledge there may be few right now but we are believing that they would increase the same goes on but there are people in in in africa that we they have the knowledge you know to develop these regulations i think you know most importantly we need to have the vision we need to have the political will to do you know to use this for our benefit but in terms of readiness some countries are ready some countries are already using it why some countries are lagging behind and those lagging behind can catch up as soon as possible thank you so much faithful right very quickly um um a question by tian simon who is saying the um to gain user trust most apps in the world today supposedly have a safety and security feature how do you tell they are actually secure given they are always open to return oriented attacks and how do you avoid data breach in applications that seek to access your files well first of all i will start with the last question how to ensure data bridge the first thing you need to do is to i i and this is not and you know is is not all i'm not giving all the ways really because each and every one of us we need to be you know be trained in cyber security at least the basic cyber security on how to you know make uh use of uh most of these gadgets that we have but then the the one of the basic way you know of going to platform to ensure that you're on the right platform say for example you're going to google are you sure you're on google or you're on g0 then gle so you need to be sure because sometimes what hackers do is that for example you have a bank called faithful bank and faithful has one i the i can be chained to l and then you are still you're thinking that you're a faithful bank the platform is the same but you're not on faithful bank so the first thing you need to do is to ensure that you're on the right you know platform and that platform you should you know ensure that they is a platform that you know you know they take uh cyber security and they take uh your privacy seriously if they are ready if they if they've been shown in the past not to take your your your your privacy seriously then you should also have you know two you know different layers of security how do you know a platform that is secure is a platform that has different layers of security so you keep an eye for all this when using any platform and i think you'll be relatively safe but this is not to say that what i've said now is all that there is to it there's still a lot more perfect um i think with this we are going to end the q a session uh faithful thank you so much for um your responses to the questions unfortunately we do not have uh more time today uh but thank you so much uh would you like to summarize uh before we do a final wrap-up of the the webinar uh i think to summarize this uh sessions that i would like to first of all say thank you once again i can see a lot of people on the on the participant list and they've stayed up till the very end a lot of them have stayed up to the very end so i want to say thank you very much please if you have ideas if you have things that we can discuss about do reach out to me i'm open to ideas my brain is open and then what i want to say about other countries that joined in is that these same technologies can be used in other countries i know i've been specific on the african continent but this is not to say that it cannot be used in other parts of the world in other parts of the world it can also be used and i want to say that the time is now for us to gain you know you know the benefits of the fourth industrial revolution and use that in making the world a better place yeah thank you all and see you next
2022-08-14