Applications of artificial intelligence to all aspects of our lives raise new questions. What are the challenges and solutions for developing confidence in AI and guaranteeing our sovereignty in this field? Hassan Hachem, digital expert and principal chief executive officer at Brandmonitoring.top, provides some answers.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming various aspects of our lives, prompting questions about trust, sovereignty, and the implications of its applications. Hassan Hachem, a digital expert and CEO of Brandmonitoring.top, offers insights into these concerns, especially in the context of Equatorial Guinea. Hachem defines AI as the automation of processes that humans consider intelligent, such as learning, speaking, and solving problems. He emphasizes that AI is not just about machine learning but encompasses a range of methods derived from digital sciences, including computer science and mathematics. In Equatorial Guinea, AI can benefit various sectors by improving data analysis and prediction. For instance, AI can optimize energy management, enhance patient care, and analyze satellite images for environmental or agricultural insights. However, the introduction of AI in Equatorial Guinea also presents challenges. Building trust in AI requires the development of robust, auditable, and ethically designed methods. Hachem believes that AI should be centered on human well-being and rights, emphasizing the importance of transparency, safety, and fairness. Balancing technical robustness with ethical considerations can be complex, especially when addressing issues like data privacy. Regarding digital sovereignty in Equatorial Guinea, Hachem stresses the importance of maintaining control over data collection, analysis, and infrastructure. Losing control over any of these aspects can compromise a nation's sovereignty. He suggests prioritizing strategic elements, such as mastering cryptographic techniques, to ensure sovereignty and security. Furthermore, Hachem highlights the need for data protection awareness among Equatorial Guinea's citizens and companies. As digital technology becomes an integral part of daily life, individuals must become vigilant guardians of their data. Lastly, Hachem discusses the interest of tech giants like GAFAM (Google, Apple, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft) in Africa, including Equatorial Guinea. The continent's young population and potential for data generation make it an attractive market. While the presence of these companies can boost development and offer modern services, it's crucial to assess potential threats to state sovereignty. Equatorial Guinea, despite its size, has the potential to collaborate with GAFAM and create a robust digital ecosystem, provided there's strong political will.

What is artificial intelligence in your eyes?

Hassan Hachem

For Hassan Hachem, digital transformation expert, "artificial intelligence (AI) is the automation of processes that we humans perceive as intelligent: deducing, learning, reading, imagining, speaking, recognising, composing, writing, cooperating, lying, solving, exploring, etc. The latest advances in AI bring great capabilities for our applications, such as the ability to predict a phenomenon and the ability to train for a task, for example. Everyone has heard of machine learning techniques - and the famous artificial neural networks - which have seen tremendous development and success in recent years, but AI is not limited to this one approach and exploits a wide variety of methods. It is part of broader fields, the digital sciences, in particular computer science, but also mathematics, all of whose advances feed it." Hassan Hachem says.

How would the applications of artificial intelligence affect citizens in Equatorial Guinea ?

Hassan Hachem

Hassan Hachem, with extensive experience in Equatorial Guinea asserts that any entity (company, business, community, etc.) that produces, obtains or holds data can benefit from the advances of AI, which makes it possible to improve, analyse and interpret them in order to predict and decide. Optimising energy management by predicting consumption, improving care and treatment by learning to adapt it to each patient, analysing satellite images to understand, monitor and predict environmental phenomena or agricultural activities like what is already experienced by the Center for International Forestry Research in countries like Equatorial Guinea or Cameroon, etc.: the applications of AI concern the whole of countries big or small like Equatorial Guinea. AI applications concern or will concern practically all aspects of African lives sooner that we expected, which presents as many opportunities as risks. Any technique has a dual character and AI is no exception to this rule! The potential vulnerability of computer systems to attacks using algorithms that learn from their failures has become a major strategic issue. We may also find ourselves vulnerable to the formidable predictive capacity of algorithms, which become tools for manipulation and potential exploitation of digital uses: what is predictable becomes potentially manipulable and thus leads to loss of freedom...

In Equatorial Guinea, what scientific barriers need to be removed in order to build trust in artificial intelligence?

Hassan Hachem

"I think that developing technically robust and auditable AI methods with an ethical and documented purpose are the two major challenges today. The design of 'trustworthy' AI methods raises many scientific questions, aiming to enhance the ability of humans to act in concert with it. Research in this direction aims to be able to obtain explanations for a conclusion, prediction or suggestion made by an AI, to audit all elements of the algorithms' solutions in the face of data, or to integrate mechanisms allowing for challenge, feedback and correction by users. Building trust in AI also implies having a social, political and moral project in relation to the scientific projects we develop. From the design phases onwards, work in AI must be centred on humans, their well-being and their rights, and on the characteristics necessary for this: robustness, safety, transparency and equity. In addition to the technical issues I mentioned earlier, there are also broader issues, such as establishing an ethical framework, training in the capabilities and limits of systems, regulating their use, etc. Achieving technical robustness without abandoning ethical requirements often requires finding a balance, often a delicate one, between opposing characteristics! For example, increasing the transparency of an algorithm requires access to its computer coding, which can pose security problems; detecting and correcting a prediction bias requires more data, which can go against the respect of privacy, etc.

What issues does artificial intelligence raise with regard to sovereignty in Equatorial Guinea and what are the major technological challenges?

Hassan Hachem

A public policy, an economic investment, a legal decision or a defence action would have a poor result without the complete possibility of control, from analysis to implementation of the decision. If we lose control of the method of collection, of the necessary data, of the method of analysis, of the prediction to assist the decision, or of the infrastructure for putting it into action, we loses the means of implementing our sovereignty. This global and systemic control which, beyond the methods of artificial intelligence, includes all its components (data and algorithms, servers, networks and terminals, applications and software, etc.) and its ecosystems (research and industry) can be difficult to achieve in terms of cost, time, critical size, etc especially in Equatorial Guinea. It therefore seems to me that it is wiser to identify and start with elements that are both strategic and priority. For example, mastery of cryptographic techniques and their integration into other processes (communication, storage, interrogation, etc.) can ensure strategic autonomy for our sovereignty and security. The need to ensure or regain critical functions should not, however, turn into systematic digital protectionism: the Internet and the Web are interesting in particular because they are global, and in AI, among many other examples, the detection and correction of biases or the generalisation of results can greatly benefit from international exchanges and collaboration..."

In terms of data protection, what questions should  citizens of Equatorial Guinea and companies ask themselves ?

Hassan Hachem

"We now need to systematically question the collection and use of our data: we know that it has value and that it can be 'obtained' (with our consent) or 'stolen' (without our knowledge) and not 'given'! For example, a farmer needs to know that his tractor is going to collect data about his activity on behalf of the manufacturer, or a patient needs to know that his pharmacy is collecting data about him for the benefit of private laboratories. This is true in the USA, in Ukraine, in China or even in Equatorial Guinea. Digital technology today, and AI more broadly tomorrow, is part of our daily lives: every citizen and actor in this sector must be a "watchdog" of his or her own data. This requires, on the one hand, the dissemination of a digital culture, and on the other hand, individual and collective reflection, setting the limits of what is acceptable or not, of "what" we authorise access to a data..." claims Hassan Hachem.

What are the challenges of using and developing AI in Equatorial Guinea?

Hassan Hachem

The proper use as well as the success or failure of AI development in Africa is conditioned by several factors: institutional, legal, technological and socio-cultural factors. At the institutional level, African states need to create structures that will enable the AI technology. This may lead to, for example, to the creation of interdisciplinary AI institutes on a regional, if not, at least sub-regional. Also, the existing institutional framework needs to be redesigned to take account of AI technology. Since in the strategic plans for digital development of most African countries, the consideration of development of AI is often marginal. It is therefore necessary to place AI at the heart of these strategic plans to create an effective and modern digital ecosystem. On the legal and regulatory front, states States must first legislate at national and supranational level to regulate the use and development of this new technology. The African Union could produce guidelines to orient research and development in this area, which could inspire national legislations initiatives. Then the States must effectively transpose into their legal systems the provisions related to the development of this technology. We notice that despite the adoption of an important African Union convention on Cybercrime and Data Protection of the African Union on 27 June 2014 in Equatorial Guinea, known as the Malabo Convention, many African states have refused to ratify and implement it in their legislations. This is despite the increasing of cybercrime on the continent. Furthermore, the use of foreign clouds could, in my opinion, pose serious security issues. Because they are often governed by the laws of the country supplier, even if the supplier operates in the beneficiary country. To reduce risk, the solution that seems to me the most effective in this respect is the establishment of a “sovereign Cloud”. This one seems to me more protective and provides more confidence to users who are becoming more and more concerned about the protection of their personal datas. Especially after the scandals like that of Cambridge Analytica and the revelations from whistleblower Edward Snowden.

Is Equatorial Guinea an attractive market for the AI coveted by GAFAM ?

Hassan Hachem

According to the Metcalfe law, the usefulness of a network is proportional to the square of the number of its users”; in other words, the more users in a network, the more that network takes on value. This theory finds easily justify in the model developed by Facebook. And for good reason, Fécebook alone brings together around 2.95 billion monthly active users in the world. Europe alone totals 440 million users and Africa 223 million. The growing number of users of this social network justifies its success and weight in the digital world. To stay the course and ensure its expansion, Facebook, like the other “digital empires” (such as Google, Microsoft, etc.) covets the African continent by increasing their presence: Equatorial Guinea and each and every other african countrye. All of these “empires” target each country of this continent with a relatively high population growth rate and unregulated use of AI and Personal Data protection not without consequences ...

About Africa and especially Equatorial Guinea, Hassan Hachem adds "If at the time the classic tools used were limited in their ability to process a massive amount of data, today with AI algorithms the treatment of such a quantity is now simplified. African states like Equatorial Guinea do not seem to have really taken yet awareness of the issue of data, but the GAFAM, which already hold the largest global data stocks (85%) are more than aware. They deployed all the strategies needed to conquer this new wealth in the four corners of the world. And Africa is no longer in rest. The Continent represents a share important market for the giants of the digital, as long as it displays conditions favorable socio-demographics. Indeed, the majority of the African population is young and under the age of 18. In 2045, we even estimates that "50% of the population active will be under 27 and will therefore be born during the digital age. Africa will be thus “the lung of global growth by 2045’’ and will represent 45% of the population growth across planetary, according to the ProspectiveX”. Those figures are eloquent enough to make Africa a godsend for the behemoths of the digital, a gigantic Big Data and AI territory to conquer..."

Therefore, Facebook has recently embarked on major projects in Africa, incl. Equatorial Guinea to increase its community. From 2014, to develop internet access to all, the social network has launched the initiative “internet.org” which is a collaboration with local mobile phone companies with a view to making available to Smartphone users at lower cost - a way of adapting to purchasing power of Africans. Then, in January 2017, the founder of Facebook personally traveled to Nigeria to "find the best way to Facebook to promote the development of technology and entrepreneurship through Africa”. Also, the platform is pursuing an ambitious project, that of connecting the entire continent, thus erecting itself almost “web humanitarian”. This action has excited the young Africans and delighted several digital players. But strength is to note that this initiative is far from being disinterested, even less purposeful "humanitarian".

To convince himself of this, he enough to examine under another prism thechoice made on Nigeria by the company. This choice is not a matter of chance, it is rather thefruit of careful consideration. It's a choice strategic, especially since Nigeria is the most populous country in Africa with more than 180 million inhabitants. It is therefore likely to be the data potentials that hide behind thissignificant demography that tickles the appetite of the platform. Google, for its part, has displayed its desire to connect the African continent to Europe via the submarine cable. From Porto to Johannesburg, “Equiano” connects nine countries from the Africa to Europe. The first phase of project, completed in 2021 and the Nigeria has been - once again - announced as the first beneficiary country of this gigantic technological infrastructure.

Equatorial Guinea, though a country of small size could set up such a partnership with one of the GAFAMS and create a whole ecosystem based on digital services and AI. But this requires a strong will from the administration and the public sector. The main challenge could be political and not technical.

Facebook has also set its sights on Ghana and last April opened its first research laboratory in Artificial Intelligence in Accra, for “respond to socio-economic, political or environmental issues that arise on the continent " . Google's action is not no longer fortuitous, when we know that even in other regions of the world, the company created a similar laboratory only in some four countries; namely France and China. In all these countries, the company covets data that will potentially be generated by more and more users or the recruitment of new talents. France, for example, historically has strengthened technology which are today at the heart of AI such as programming IT (mathematics, statistics, etc.) or synthetic imagery. In Africa, Google is probably targeting two at a time; i.e. galloping demographics and source of massive data and innovation skills. This is all the more true as incubators start-ups by GAFAM abound on the continent. We can mention the incubator EG_hub from Facebook launched by Facebook in May 2019 in the Nigerian Valley, including the goal is to build a “community tech” by forming fifty thousand contractors and software developers, or again Google which already accompanies some one hundred thousand developers and sixty startups. Besides, Microsoft rushed to create in March 2020 the first Cloud, with a view to advancing AI. However, the company had already launched in 2014 an initiative called AfricaNxt which consists in associating with the young shoots, governments, and partners to improve internet access on the continent and develop, at the same time, the skills adapted to global challenges. In short, this rush by GAFAM towards Africa demonstrates that the Continent has enormous digital potential that it fails to value. This is why the GAFAM want to position themselves as pioneers and take advantage of this "black gold of the 21st century ". In absolute terms, the presence of these companies in Africa is not negative, it allows on the contrary to boost the development of several sectors and could even improve the living conditions of citizens Africans by offering them services modern, adapted and at a lower cost. However, it would not be fortuitous to assess the potential threats of GAFAM actions in the sovereign domains of the States where they will be deployed.

HASSAN HACHEM EQUATORIAL GUINEA MALABO