Members of InstaDeep’s Nigeria team in their Lagos workspace, including co-founder Karim Beguir (third from right).
The Bright Continent:
Tales from Africa’s AI Ecosystem ‘Just Two Laptops and a Lot of Enthusiasm’ Ignoring his friends’ advice, Karim Beguir left his career five years ago in London as a financial engineer and returned home to Tunisia to found an AI startup. And he hasn’t looked back since.
1ST QUARTER 2019
by ISHA SALIAN Article & Images courtesy of NVIDIA
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A packed house: The NeurIPS Black in AI event was attended by around 300 people.
At NeurIPS, the world’s top AI research conference, Beguir spoke earlier this month to 300 attendees at the Black in AI gathering. And his company, InstaDeep, presented two papers — a rare feat for an African startup. “We started from literally nothing — just two laptops and a lot of enthusiasm,” said Beguir. “If told a few years ago that we would reach such a level of recognition in AI research, I would’ve considered it impossible.” As deep learning and AI innovation take root worldwide, Africa’s AI ecosystem is gaining traction. The business value of AI in sub-Saharan Africa is forecasted to grow more than 30x over the next seven years to $46.6 billion. Hundreds of startups already make their home in Africa — mainly in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya — and raised $560 million in VC funding in 2017. That’s 14x the amount raised in 2012. As many Africa-based companies and researchers adopt AI technology, their growth is being fostered by NVIDIA GPUs and online deep learning resources.
