Ayomide Owoyemi leads planning of the Africa AI Impact Summit

Ayomide Owoyemi, PhD in biomedical and health informatics student, was the main organizer and convener of the the Africa AI Impact Summit.

The event kicked off with a captivating keynote by Lavina Ramkinssoon from the African Union, discussing “The AI Hype and Promise for Africa.” Emmanuel Paul of Techpoint adeptly moderated a subsequent panel discussion on “Best Approaches to Building for Impact in Africa: Lessons from the Field,” featuring industry leaders from Google, Lelapa AI, Mila Quebec & Lelapa, Intron Health, and Nvidia.

Following the discussions, we dove into specialized workshop sessions on “Generative AI Product Development for Africa,” helmed by Chris Adolphus of CoverAI and Zion Pibowei of Periculum. One of the summit’s crowning moments was the pitch session where startups BloomFi, JuiceLife, and 0XIntelligence displayed their innovative products. BloomFi notably stood out and won the pitch session, with judges Chinasa T Okolo of Cornell University and Aramide Abe of the AFDB offering their commendation.

A milestone for the summit was the launch of www.aisafari.io, an official curation and showcase platform, conceptualized to spotlight and advance AI innovations from Africa.

The summit drew an audience of over 600 attendees from 35 diverse countries. The success of the summit underscores the growing prominence of AI in Africa and the collaborative zeal of its pioneers.

Here is a report in a Nigerian newspaper about it: https://businessday.ng/news/article/770085-ai/?amp=1