Already established on 3 continents, multinational technology giant, Google deployed its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Centre in Accra this week.

The first of its kind to be opened in Africa, the Centre will gather Machine Learning engineers and researchers in the capital to facilitate local AI development.

The company already has several centres around the world, in the United States and Canada, but also in Israel, the United Kingdom, Japan, Switzerland and France. 

Addressing the media during the launch, Head of Google AI Accra, Moustapha Cisse said the aim of establishing the AI Research Centre in Accra is to meet the increasing interest in Machine Learning research across the continent.

“We’ll work and collaborate with institutions across the continent; the team itself is very international; it’s already about 10 people coming from more than 12 different countries; Africans and non-Africans as well so we’re looking forward to collaborating with African Institutions.

“Our goal is to advance the frontiers of this science so we expect to have a scientific impact but also we expect to through collaborations with different institutions working on local challenges, have an impact to be on our field by applying the technology to agriculture to health and to other areas where it can be also,” he said.

According to Google, the lab’s mission will include working on issues related to health, education, and agriculture.

It said in the latter area, Google is interested in the role that AI can play in agricultural production.

Mr. Cisse said Google will team up forces with local organisations and universities, policymakers and other stakeholders to deploy AI in solving challenges in various sector of the economy.

He said their aim is to make things across the various sectors easy and accessible to Ghanaians. 

The Accra Center has a team of 10 software engineers and research scientists from different countries hailing from USA, Israel, Nigeria, Ireland, Lesotho, Senegal, Canada, UK and Uganda.