Google Speech-to-Text API Automatic Transcription (Chirp). Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a quotation record.
00:00:00gallery
00:00:00of 1957, the annual event showcase in Ganian Art has seen
00:00:04growing international interest. For
00:00:07of
00:00:08a of Denise, showcasing these stories today has been boosted by the digital
00:00:11world. You have the opportunity to share what your work is
00:00:14about, and I think that has something to do with
00:00:18social media. Now there's access to
00:00:21of the information, the stories carried in these
00:00:24of objects that
00:00:25of we are making as artists and that also gives them a lot more
00:00:30of of value.
00:00:31the numbers tell the same story with online sales making up nearly
00:00:35fifth of all global art sales in 2024 according to an
00:00:38art basel and
00:00:39of UBA
00:00:40of study. whether it's using digital tools to create art or using
00:00:44digital
00:00:45of platforms to share art, technology has created a new global canvas
00:00:49for Ganean artists to use, and I think we have lot to do
00:00:52still, we have so much to do, but we're getting
00:00:56there slowly with all these opportunities. are now
00:01:00coming in around us, step by step, we'll get there and then we'll
00:01:04see the value of African arts and
00:01:07of the importance of it as
00:01:08well.
00:01:12when it comes to using digital
00:01:13in tools and education as a great equalizer across Africa, Fred
00:01:17Swanika is all in. The Ghanayan born entrepreneur opened the doors
00:01:21to the African Leadership Academy in South Africa in 2008, training
00:01:25high school students to prepare them for pathway to
00:01:29of university. He then went to establish the African Leadership university in
00:01:33of Mauritius in 2015. But with technology ever
00:01:36evolving, Swanika says his ambition turned to ensuring the continent's next
00:01:40generation of talent knew how to build their
00:01:43of own tech. Today that talent he's helped nurture drives his
00:01:47latest
00:01:48in venture, an AI company with global clients called Sand
00:01:50Technologies. CNN's Nick Watt set down with him to talk about
00:01:54Africa's tech talent
00:01:55of and why Africa will be the region to solve the world's
00:01:58problems.
00:02:02is there a different approach from the companies
00:02:06and the engineers and the coders in Africa, different approach
00:02:10than we might
00:02:11a see of in Silicon Valley in terms
00:02:12of the kind of problems they try and tackle. yes, because
00:02:15you see when when you look at the engineers that we're developing in
00:02:18Africa, um, firstly we're training the very different way,
00:02:21so um, we believe
00:02:24of that
00:02:24of technology is means to an end, it's not the end itself, right? i want to use AI
00:02:28to fix healthcare, i want to use AI. our
00:02:30of cities
00:02:31to for
00:02:32of fix education, so that is what drives this talent, they want to
00:02:36of solve problems for society, and so the
00:02:40ethos is quite different, what we're doing in Africa is start first with the problems
00:02:43and then look at
00:02:45of how the technology can solve it,
00:02:47of and your engineers are based where, so I've got about 350
00:02:51engineers and about 300 are based in Africa, about 100 phds and data
00:02:55scientists who build these complicated artificial intelligence
00:02:58models that... that
00:03:00of are helping to run the real
00:03:01world.
00:03:05i want to talk about health for a bit, so
00:03:07again, what was the problem and
00:03:11the big problem that we saw in africa, and by the way, the same problem that we're solving exists in rural
00:03:15America in many
00:03:16of the other states in the US. um, there's a shortage of
00:03:19doctors, so the average doctor patient ratio in
00:03:22Africa is 8000 patients to one doctor, to one doctor, in the west,
00:03:26it's about 300 to 400, 300 patients per doctor, so the problem we saw. how do you
00:03:30bring world class healthcare when you don't have enough
00:03:36of of doctors to to what's going
00:03:37de to be 40% of the world's population so um we have developed something called the health operating system and it has
00:03:41three components the first component
00:03:43of is digitizing health infrastructure so we're
00:03:47going into different countries in Africa we're actually working right now in 18 countries on the
00:03:50continent to uh first digitize the infrastructure once
00:03:54you have the data streaming from that the second part of
00:03:56it is we then augment healthcare
00:03:59of professionals with
00:04:00of intelligence, so
00:04:01of you can take a community healthcare worker or nurse, which are much more abundant than
00:04:05doctors,
00:04:05of yeah, of and give them all sorts of AI
00:04:07of tools that allow them to do most
00:04:08of of his care things that before, maybe only doctor would have been able to do. once you've connected the
00:04:12facilities and you've you augmented healthcare professional,
00:04:16you can have all this data that's coming, and that's now goes into
00:04:20what we call the health intelligence center, which we are supporting different ministries of health and
00:04:24africa to to to develop, and this health intelligence center
00:04:27aggregates data from the entire system, all the thousands of hospitals
00:04:31and clinics in the
00:04:33me country, so you can start to now see across the system, where
00:04:37should you allocate your limited resources, if I only have so much money, where should i
00:04:41build my clinics, where should i send my supply chain, my pharmaceutical, so you can
00:04:44now allocate the much better precision, your resources, you can make better
00:04:48decisions, you can predict pandemics, you know how to
00:04:52what kind of training to do for your health work force and so forth,
00:04:56of and shifts the whole healthcare system from being reactive and expensive to... more predictive
00:05:00and
00:05:01in preventive, of of
00:05:04and because there's a need for this in Africa, there is the
00:05:08environment in which you can develop and test it and you...
00:05:12exactly, one the things i always say is that constraints drives innovation, so in Africa we've got real
00:05:16serious problems and those constraints is forcing us to leverage some these these
00:05:20technologies, and so AI is if
00:05:23we play our cards right as a continent will allow us
00:05:27to completely leap frog development and
00:05:31build new, in fact the model of education that we've
00:05:34developed with
00:05:35the alx where we are training people who are able to
00:05:39compete with stanford graduats and graduats a...
00:06:12alone because it's it's like any tool,
00:06:16you can use knife to prepare a great meal, but it can also be a dangerous
00:06:20tool can be used to kill someone, right? it all depends on the intention
00:06:24behind it, and so the the the values that
00:06:28underly that tool will determine whether it's inclusive or exclusive,
00:06:32so access to markets, access to education, access to health, all these
00:06:35things um can be enabled by
00:06:38technology and it can allow you to leap frog.
00:06:42catch up and develop faster, but it needs to be guided by the
00:06:46right vision, the right values. when we come back, CNN's
00:06:50Nick Watch, continues the conversation with Sant Technology CEO and
00:06:54African Leadership Group founder Fred
00:06:56Swanika.
00:07:03Welcome back. For Fred Swanika, the answer is clear. Armed with the
00:07:06world's youngest population, Africa has what it takes to be at
00:07:10the forefront of developing. tech solutions for the world's
00:07:14biggest problems. join us as we head back into that
00:07:17conversation to hear what he says is needed to ensure that that
00:07:21potential continues to be
00:07:23nurtured.
00:07:27obviously in this day and age
00:07:29you know we're worried about you particularly with AI but just with tech of
00:07:32various marginalized communities being left
00:07:36behind. is
00:07:37there a concern that a global scale that if Africa doesn't keep up with this
00:07:41Africa will get left behind? Yes, there is,
00:07:43I think I think very much in terms the opportunity that we have with
00:07:47artificial intelligence, so um, when you
00:07:51think about development,
00:07:54historically, development has been measured by GDP per capital.
00:07:58Development ultimately is about quality of life. Why do we want to develop? We want
00:08:02better healthcare, we want education, enough
00:08:06food, security, and so one way to
00:08:10develop is to try and catch up with the GDP capital. the rest the world,
00:08:13but africa $2,300 year talking and the west
00:08:17about we're $80,000 year, the west continues to grow, it will take us 100
00:08:21years, very difficult to catch up. another way to develop is to say,
00:08:25i'm actually going to reduce the cost of getting good
00:08:29education and healthcare and so forth to such that it fits within my
00:08:33GDP per right, right, right? so for example, that school that we bought
00:08:37in silicon valley, the engineer, the graduates
00:08:41were earning more than Stanford.
00:09:13year, but I can send my three children to a Stanford quality
00:09:17education. We can leverage AI to radically reduce the
00:09:20cost the things that you would have wanted your high GDP per capital, so we can
00:09:24therefore completely redefine what it means to be developed
00:09:28society.
00:09:33You must have a certain amount of leakage in terms of your talent in
00:09:36Africa moving to the US or the UK, absolutely
00:09:40to try and earn more money for themselves. Right, how do you deal with that?
00:09:44I encourage it, let tell you why, brain drain
00:09:48is only a problem when you're training talent at low scale, and you're training enough people
00:09:51exactly, we're doing this scale, so like I said,
00:09:552024 we train 700 thousand people, our goal is to train th to 5 million
00:09:59people in the next decade, so what Africa has,
00:10:02that no one else has is young
00:10:04people.
00:10:08So just in terms the practicalities, in terms of skate.
00:10:25we can use all these AI techniques, but if I don't even
00:10:27have um basic electricity to switch on my
00:10:31device or access the internet and all the
00:10:35of you, it's going to be,
00:10:39challenge, so the second challenge I would say
00:10:41is um access to capital
00:10:45right, as you know Africa
00:10:48gets less than 3% the world's benture capital
00:10:51funding, we're only 3% the world's GDP so...
00:10:55need a massive investment into this talent
00:10:58pool and into this ecosystem to actually catalyze the
00:11:02entrepreneurs, the innovators who can solve many the Africa's and many the world's problems. the third
00:11:06thing that's a challenge is access to markets, because any entrepreneur and
00:11:10innovation
00:11:11that is born ultimately needs a market to sell it into
00:11:14right, and he start and so the the market
00:11:18problems are toofold, each market in Africa is is too small, when
00:11:22you aggregate africa's economy, are
00:11:25the trillion dollars, but when you
00:11:27look at each individual economy, there's 54 countries, so you have small markets, right, right, so
00:11:31suddenly, one the reasons why the US works is one big
00:11:34market, right, right, Africa should similarly, by breaking
00:11:38down his barriers you can start to create one big market, which makes it attractive both for foreign
00:11:41investors and local entrepreneurs to be able to to scale,
00:11:45other aspect around access to markets is making it easier for African
00:11:49entrepreneurs to access global markets so that they can tap into that
00:11:5397% the world's GDP. that is not enough, how does that happen? well, I
00:11:57think digital is a great enable of that, because now as a,
00:12:01someone who's making baskets or making movies in Africa
00:12:05or any other kind of service, once you
00:12:08digitize your distribution channels, you can sell on Instagram and
00:12:12Facebook and all these different platforms now that if you look at what the
00:12:16Nigerians have done with music, yeah,
00:12:18I mean 10, 15 years ago uh
00:12:22Nigerian musicians were earning... for
00:12:26performance because they were trying to sell
00:12:29locally, but when they went global,
00:12:32you know, you see burner boy and whiskid selling out the O2 Arena or Madison Square Garden,
00:12:36and you see with digital help, with digital help, right, they they
00:12:40became global and famous because of YouTube and Instagram and all
00:12:44these
00:12:44things.
00:12:48Is the attitude the rest the world towards Africa being
00:12:51changed by access to... all
00:12:55these African art forms, but also African innovation. In certain
00:12:59ways, yes, but I think the rest the world still doesn't
00:13:03understand Africa's potential. Yeah. Growing
00:13:06up, um, I was brought up on
00:13:10Hollywood, right, so I watched you, one the greatest exports that America has
00:13:13had is its culture, and that came through film and music, and
00:13:17so by being able to tell
00:13:18our own story as a content, um, we will
00:13:22be able to change how we are seeing. on our terms and
00:13:26not let others write our
00:13:28story.
00:13:37whether it's international sports leagues like e-1, debuting in Nigeria or
00:13:41the tiny island nation of Cape Verde looking to expand tourism
00:13:45sustainably, digital tools are playing key role in both
00:13:48education and outreach. Take a
00:13:51look.
00:13:55if you look at the structure of Legos State, about 16% the
00:13:58land mass is made up of water and we have um the
00:14:02water network that is capable of taking you any almost anywhere in
00:14:06Lagos, despite this the usage was very very low,
00:14:10then less
00:14:11than 1%. Lagos, Nigeria is betting
00:14:14big its waterways and big sports leagues like E1
00:14:18have brought in. There is a an amazing alignment
00:14:22of vision, energy. Recent partnership with the electric boat
00:14:26racing franchise brought its first ever race on the African continent
00:14:30to Lagos this past October.
00:14:34E1 goes beyond the sport and I think the
00:14:37sport needs to play this kind of role which is
00:14:41inspirational. This comes with thought
00:14:44leadership, some concrete action on the
00:14:48coastal area,
00:14:50but the move to bring E1 to the shores of Africa goes far beyond
00:14:54this one rate. It's a push that brings technology to the
00:14:57forefront. There will be conversation with
00:15:00local technology providers and university to understand if
00:15:04we can fit their technologies in the future generation
00:15:08of our race boats. They will be inspiration for
00:15:12young students at high school level and university to
00:15:16pursue science, technology, engineering studies that is
00:15:20so important for the future the the
00:15:23planets and the environment. and any possible
00:15:27application, the league says they partnered with the state a
00:15:30range of events highlighting stem and sustainability and an effort
00:15:34to amplify their message of conservation and innovation. when it comes
00:15:38to the waterways, they're hoping their moves create a ripple
00:15:42effect. we want to show that
00:15:46different water mobility is possible for the future. this will
00:15:49bring developments, this will bring jobs,
00:15:52innovation and will put
00:15:55Lagos potentially in the map the place
00:15:59to go, if you want to learn about the water mobility the
00:16:02future. with more than
00:16:0620 million residents, Lagos's roads are often
00:16:09congested despite several jetty terminals and almost 60
00:16:12major water routes across the state. Water
00:16:16transports in Legos States with what Legos State has has the ability
00:16:20and the capacity to remove 41% the traffic public
00:16:24to use water. At Ikorodu, major
00:16:28hub in the state, private ferry operators say despite some challenges
00:16:32increased government involvement has been a game
00:16:35changer. So let's say 20. 2018 at the time
00:16:39where this particular terminal where raining was still on the
00:16:42construction, we were moving about say 10, 15 boats per
00:16:46day, now as of today we move nothing less than
00:16:5050 boats a day, with the growing success
00:16:54of private operators and a big event like the e1 race,
00:16:58the tide seems to be turning, it was where sustainability made
00:17:01innovation, because what we saw happening with that boat race
00:17:05was a dynam. way of looking at
00:17:09water transport um and lot the local operators could
00:17:13see the future, so we saw them as well getting involved, loving the
00:17:16race and being able to plan for themselves, saying this is where we want eventually be in the
00:17:20future. now we head to the sunny shores of
00:17:24Cape Verde to see how digitization is helping boost economies across the
00:17:28country by bringing more groups into the
00:17:31mix.
00:17:35vacation destination that once seemed far away is
00:17:38suddenly within reach. In
00:17:42the very early days, hardly anyone had heard of Cape Verde.
00:17:46Now it is very much known destination, and
00:17:50we are now experiencing a real explosion of interest
00:17:54from all over, predominantly Europe, so very,
00:17:58very well sort after destination. Flying 600
00:18:01kilome off the coast of West Africa, Cape Verde is a small string of
00:18:05volcanic islands famed for. sun, sand and sea
00:18:08life, not to mention miles of unbroken
00:18:12beaches. This tiny country with a population of just over
00:18:16600 thousand has proven very attractive for
00:18:19perspective investors and business of late has been
00:18:23booming. In winter of 2025, the UK- based
00:18:27low-cost airline easyjet expanded service to Cape
00:18:31Verde with six new roots out of London and other major
00:18:35European cities. It's Chief commercial officer Paul
00:18:39Bixby says that while Cape Verd's government has been open to providing
00:18:42economic support, the next step is making sure the country's infrastructure
00:18:46and hotels are up to date and can handle a large increase in
00:18:50visitors. We carry 100 million passengers, we've got 350
00:18:54aeroplanes, we're not, we're not niche, we're we're a digital
00:18:57company, you disruption is marriage by phone, by
00:19:00app, you don't have thousands of people that can that can manage
00:19:04this, so it has to be quite seamless and quite mass market.
00:19:08While tourism is unquestionably the backbone of Cape Verd's economy,
00:19:12accounting for roughly a quarter the country's GDP, the island nation
00:19:16is also looking to grow its digital sector. With investments in
00:19:20e-government and cyber security, Cape Verde hopes to one day be a
00:19:23competitive hub for IT services, Fintech and business processing
00:19:27operations, servicing an international
00:19:29clientel. All the businesses, not only
00:19:33tourism, but especially tourism, that is the main service sector.
00:19:38in in Cape Verde depends heavily on the digital. Cape Verde
00:19:42knows the importance the digitalization the
00:19:45services and the tourism ecosystem in Cape
00:19:49Verdey. When tourists go to Cape Verde, you just you
00:19:52use for example e-gate to cross the border easily uh in in in
00:19:56some airport and there are more investment on that, so that's
00:20:00facilitate everything. Whether it's a digital transformation and
00:20:04burgening it sector or the continued growth of internet. national
00:20:07tourism, this tiny island nation hopes they're planning
00:20:11today will pay dividends for generations to
00:20:14come. all
00:20:18right, that does it for this very special edition of marketplace africa, the
00:20:21link. thank you so much for joining me, remember you keep up with us on social
00:20:25media and online as well. i'm zaine asha, i'll see you next
00:20:29time in the
00:20:30marketplace.
00:30:48Dobar dan, poštovani gledaoci, dobrodošli u
00:30:50dnevnik.
00:30:55Dio rudara i dalje u jami raspotočje, rudnici
00:30:59uglja u zed.