Panel Discussion: 01

for your inspiring reflections and also for highlighting the transformative role of artificial intelligence, as well as the disruptive role of artificial intelligence, drawing our attention to it and shaping our future. Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to introduce the speakers for a ministerial conversation. The speakers in this fireside conversation is Her Excellency Sina Lawson, Minister of Digital Transformation, Togo. His Excellency Nizar Patria, Vice Minister of Communications, Indonesia. His Excellency Rafat Hindi, Minister of Communications, Egypt. Minister Lawson has made Togo one of Africa’s most watched digital transformation stories, building mobile first government services that reach citizens who were previously entirely excluded from the formal economy. Her work is a reminder that AI’s greatest opportunities may lie in the global south.

Her work is a reminder that AI’s greatest opportunities may lie in the global south. minister patria representing the world’s fourth most populous nation and one of southeast asia’s fastest growing digital economies his excellency is navigating the complex challenge of building ai policy for a country of 270 million people spread across 17 000 islands egypt is positioning itself as an ai hub for the arab world and africa and minister hindi is leading that change with a young population and growing digital infrastructure egypt’s ambitions are both compelling and instructive for developing nations navigating the ai transition ladies and gentlemen i would like to invite our speakers please with a big round of applause i would like to request you to please welcome the minister from togo from indonesia and also from egypt i request our honorable dignitaries to kindly take your place on this stage and this conversation is being moderated by Ms.

Debjani Ghosh distinguished fellow Niti Aayog, I request Ms. Debjani Ghosh to kindly join us AI Summit is a place where everybody looks forward to such ministerial conversations and this is one such conversation that everybody is looking forward to because when we say that this is the first ever AI Summit which is being organized in a country of global south, it makes a difference and here we have very elite panel with us. Her Excellency Sina Lawson, Minister of Digital Transformation, Togo is going to join us. His Excellency Nizar Patria, Vice Minister of Communications, Indonesia. His Excellency Rafat Hindi, Minister of Communications, Egypt. We are expecting our other guests to join us very soon as Ms. Devjani Khosh, Distinguished Fellow Niti Ayog is going to moderate this conversation.

And this will also give us an insight into the countries of Global South, how they are adopting artificial intelligence, what are the challenges before them, and how the world has to come together. This global cooperation is needed so that nobody is left out of the touch of artificial intelligence, the benefits of artificial intelligence. And that’s when Honorable Prime Minister says it’s AI for all. This is what we mean, that it should reach each and every person. Of the continent, of the world, and AI should bring a change into the people of global. South too. Only then we can say that we are going, moving ahead in the right direction. So keeping that in mind, ladies and gentlemen, this ministerial conversation is going to be of utmost importance when we talk of AI Impact Summit, because this conversation will also bring to the fore those points on the basis of which we can say that AI is making an impact into the lives of people, especially the people of Global South.

And when we talk of the challenges, the difficulties which face Indians, our countrymen, that is the time when we can say that if you are able to find low -cost AI solutions to our problems, they will also be the solutions which can be adopted very, very easily by the other countries of the Global South. So here we are bringing to you this ministerial conversation. Our guests are here. And this elite panel from these countries, from Congo, Egypt, and Indonesia, will bring before us those issues that are of utmost importance to the lives of people, especially the people those aspects on which they’ve already been. working, the challenges which they think they need cooperation from other countries as well, if they want to counter these challenges.

Because when you talk of Global South, ladies and gentlemen, unless Global South develops, unless Global South adopts artificial intelligence, it cannot bring a change in the world. And that is what this summit aims at, that we must impact the lives of common men. Nobody should be left behind. And when we say this, we say, which means it’s AI for all. Everybody should be benefited. So, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome our elite panelists here. We have Her Excellency, Sina Lawson, Minister of Digital Transformation, Togo. Please welcome her. His Excellency, Nisar Patria, Vice Minister of Communications, Communications Indonesia, and His Excellency, Raphat Hindi, Minister of Communications, Egypt. It’s over to you, Ms. Devjani Khosh. Thank you.

Thank you very much. much and good afternoon, everyone. And thank you to all of those who are here. So we are all finally here. And as you can see, this is truly a very power -packed panel. So since this is about the Impact Summit, the AI Impact Summit, and since we are gathered from all over the world to talk about the creation of Impact by AI, I want to first start with you, Mr. Petra. You know, when you think about the journey that we’ve had till now, the global community has had till now with AI, a lot of the focus has been on building the infrastructure. So how do you think we have really done on putting that infrastructure to work to create impact?

If you had to rate it on a scale of one to ten, what would you give the world? What score would you give the world? Thank

you, Ms. Jenny. This is really a challenging question, actually. if I had to give a number I would give 6 out of 10 yeah why 6? because well if we talk about the emerging technologies like artificial intelligence is it is the words like a buzz like a mantra right now everyone talking about AI and AI right now is here is with us and many people they don’t scrutinize anymore about the useful of AI they just use but the problem is the level of adoption of this technology, this emerging technology, especially for the global short countries like Indonesia and maybe some of African countries, Asian countries. We still have a digital gap. Yes. Especially for Indonesia, we are an archipelago country.

We are archipelagic. So we have 17 ,000 islands. We have five big islands in Indonesia. And each island has a very unique characteristic, very unique people, culture, and so on. And the telecommunication infrastructure is very, very important for our country. That unites our country with this telecommunication infrastructure. We try to improve. We try to cover all of the archipelago by our telecommunication network. And now the internet penetration into the population is already about 80%. Our population right now is 250 million people. And now what we do with these infrastructures, digital infrastructure or telecommunication infrastructure, we want meaningful connectivity. Yeah, that’s it. Meaningful connectivity. That means how we use this connectivity with the emerging technologies like artificial intelligence on top of these infrastructures to give benefit to the people.

So government try to be the accelerator to build this meaningful connectivity

Now, that’s very well said. So six out of 10. And the main gap or the main reason is we still have miles to go before everyone has access. And access has to be meaningful. Right? I think that’s very well said. Ms. Lawson, would you agree with that? Or would you have a different take on that?

Hello, everyone. Good afternoon. Yes, I do agree. Absolutely. I think that when we talk about AI, for us, at least Africans, it’s not about the technology. It’s about what we can do with it. And so a few comments. Number one is that in terms of AI talent, the African continent represents less than 1 % worldwide. In terms of infrastructure, we also have a lot of AI talent. We also have challenges. You know, a lot of countries don’t have connected schools or hospitals. So we’re still building our connectivity. and I would say that but if you look at few examples few achievements that we had using AI in terms of impact we can see that even today it’s equal to 9 out of 10 so every time we implement it in our way solving our problems then the number comes closer to 10 than anything I would also say that the African Union position was to use artificial intelligence in real life use cases so the impact for us and the sectors, the priority sectors are government infrastructure and the way we function it’s health, education, agriculture so I think that if we succeed to implement AI in those sectors then our continent will change forever

I really like that, the fact that you brought out three very important mission -critical sectors, rather than saying we need to go and do everything. But I think that priority is so important. And by the way, part of the seven working groups that was there under the AI Summit, one of the working groups, which I had the privilege of co -chairing, along with Indonesia and Netherlands, was economic impact and social development. And one of the things we decided that’s needed right now to accelerate impact is the creation of AI Commons that brings together best practices, know -how. So that was one of the key outcomes of part of the working groups that we launched. Mr.

Hendy, if I may come to you. When we talk about impact, one thing we realize is it means so many different things to so many different people. Can you give us an example of something? Something that you believe is truly… a North Star with respect to how impact has been created. A great example of how impact has been created.

Yes, thank you. In Egypt, the most meaningful impact AI has been in expanding the access to the essential public services, such as healthcare and education, in a larger scale and at nation -wide. We are using AI tools for early detection for breast cancer and some diabetes -related conditions. And we are now launching a new AI powerful tool for education support to be used in high school with high school students and teachers across the country. For the first time, advanced medical screening and learning support become available for underserved community. We usually have able to do it in big city and in elite institution, but now we are able to do it with underserved community. Three things made this possible in Egypt.

A government -first approach that puts public interest first and sovereignty AI capability that reflects our language and our local needs. Also, the strong partnership between across the government and national AI ecosystem and the global partners. Thank you.

Mr. Patria, any good example that you would like to share of impact creation in Indonesia or any other country that you think has done a really good job of it?

Well, I will share one example from Indonesia, how this artificial intelligence can help. Because we are a very diverse nation and also archipelago country, so sometimes we in the public services, for instance, healthcare, we need effective and efficient technology adoptions to help these healthcare sectors. So now we try to to encourage our young generation that build a startup. And we try to facilitate them in what he calls is an AI innovation hub. And one of the product is try to help doctors in the remote area to diagnostic the tuberculosis. The tuberculosis or TBC is coming on the stage. And it becomes very difficult for the doctors in the remote area to detect because they have a very limited access on the modern equipment or sophisticated technology to detect this tuberculosis diseases.

But with the artificial intelligence, so this startup tried to gather all of the big data from the health center in the remote areas and then make a simple program and give it to the doctors. And combined with the x -ray machine, it can help doctors to identify whether this is TBC or this is just ordinary lung problems. So I see these initiatives in certain sectors already copied to other sectors for the education, for the agriculture. Many startups try to adopt this AI technology right now. And I can see and we can feel that the enthusiasm is really, really high. But the problem we need as a government, as a policymaker, we need to give the safeguard and to accelerate.

in building this healthy and fair ecosystem to boost the innovation on artificial intelligence.

Fantastic. Ms. Lawson, any favorite impact story that you want to share?

Yes, I have a great impact story. During the pandemic, we were able to use AI to prioritize the beneficiaries for our financial aid program. So at the height of the pandemic, we built a program to distribute cash using mobile phones, right? So the question then was, how do you prioritize beneficiaries? We started in 2020. And in 2020, we didn’t know if the pandemic was going to last for a long time. So we had one certainty, which was that we needed to be super efficient in programming. Prioritizing who needed the money the most. And so we used two AI algorithms. One… applied to satellite imagery. We drew the poverty map of Togo. And then another based on machine learning with telecom metadata, we were able to isolate the phone numbers of people who were, yeah.

So that was really our first major experience using AI. And then after the pandemic, the question for us was, we want this to be sustainable. Right? How do you, because it was during the pandemic, we had a partnership with Berkeley. So we were working, really figuring out things as they were coming. But afterwards, we wanted to build capabilities in -house. So we now have within the Ministry of Public Sector Efficiency, a team of 25 people, data scientists, and we support other branches of government. Because when we talk, you know, here we talk about AI and everybody really, knows what AI is and the type of applications that, you know, things we can do with AI. But a lot of people, they don’t know what AI is.

don’t know. So it’s very important to have a team of people who work, say, with the Ministry of Agriculture or the Ministry of Environment and producing images and really data that can help these ministries improve policies. So I think this is a great learning experience for us. It’s applying AI to improve policies.

It’s such a brilliant example because one, it impacts the grassroots, right? The people who need it the most. And second, it’s, you know, government has a lot of, I mean, especially in the Global South, a lot of government usages, augmentation of services. I think what you’re doing is really enabling better development of policies. And that’s that. I would, in fact, request you to please share this case study so we can put it in the AI Commons that we have built. So I would really request you to do that. The next question is also to you, Ms. Lawson, which is… As government, what do you think is the biggest roadblock to scaling impact creation where it can reach population?

Is it data? Is it infrastructure? Is it regulation? Or is it even geopolitical dynamics?

So I think it’s a combination of various things. We’re tackling all of these things. But first, it’s infrastructure, because that’s the starting point. But you also have something, when I was referring to the data lab, a lot of people don’t know this universe exists, right? That you can apply, you know, you can use AI to gather information as to when you want to design a new infrastructure, like an itinerary. For example, when we build our fiber optics network, we use satellite imagery and so on. But a lot of people just don’t know it exists. Right. So they can’t ask. They don’t know which question to ask. Right. And so. So even if we’re there, so we do a lot of outreach within government going and saying, look, this is what we were able to do using AI and so on.

So I think that what I would call institutional capacity is a roadblock because people just don’t know. So it’s a lot of training required. The other thing is, and I think it’s also one thing that we’ve been working on is right now AI is in French or English, right? It’s not in, it’s not, we have in Togo, we have 42 languages and dialects. And for AI to, if we want massive AI adoption, we need to be able to provide these models in local languages. So that’s one very important aspect of what we’ve been up to. 42 languages. Yeah. Wow. And dialects, you know, I’m sure that, yeah. Yeah. So that’s the challenge. But that’s also the opportunity because when you think about creating.

impact for AI. Think of education. Imagine, and that’s what I imagine, imagine a world where every school children has an AI tutor being able to explain to them, you know, math and science in local languages, in their own dialects. That’s for me, the power of AI, really.

So institutional capacity is one of the biggest roadblocks that you see. Mr. Pedra, is there anything you want to add to that in terms of the biggest roadblocks to mass scale impact creation?

Yeah, I agree with the colleagues from Togo. I think it’s the problem today for the global sub -countries like Indonesia, and I think some of African countries and other ASEAN countries. is now we are facing the geopolitical condition that you mentioned is really challenging times today because we are facing asymmetric conditions amongst global sorts and global norms. And that’s one problem because the platformization, the dominance of the platform is so important to define or to determine the progress of the fair ecosystem in one country. That’s the first thing. And the second one, I think the infrastructure is one of the critical things that we need to pay attention. We need to improve. We need to heighten the standard of services on this infrastructure.

And then regulations. I think regulation is also very important. in this sense because… Do we over -regulate? No, no, no. We don’t intend to heavily regulate these AI sectors because we try to balance protections and also innovations. That’s most important, I think. If you heavily regulate, so no innovations at all. I cannot agree more. Yeah, so we try to balance. And the most important, the last thing that is most important, I think, we need to improve our research and development and then attract the investment to support these innovations and to nurture our digital talent. That’s the most important that we have to do in the short term.

Extremely well said. And I think between the two of you really captured it. While infrastructure is always important and you always want to, you want more compute, you want to build it out. But if you don’t have institutional capacity, then investment in that infrastructure will not give you the returns. And regulation needs to help innovation, needs to help scale. And R &D is absolutely critical. So I think these are brilliant points. I know our time is up. So my last question, and I would request all three of you to answer. If we look at the next five years, the future, how should AI success be measured? Today, we are primarily looking at how many models we are building, how big are the models.

How should we be looking at AI success? What’s the North Star? I’ll start with you, Mr. Hendy.

If I have to choose now, it would be this. The business. The percentage of people that have access. Wonderful. To high. Quality AI enabled services. Wonderful. Not the number of models, not the compute. The people’s benefits are the most important. They have to benefit from healthcare, from education, from agriculture and government. And the KPI matters for three reasons, actually. First, it shifts the focus from technology to people. And AI is advancing very fast. But access to it is not that fast. We need to make sure this happens. And this is what I can see for 2030, maybe for AI. Second, it exposes the global gaps, not hiding them. So gaps in the compute, gaps in infrastructure, in local language models.

So this is very important. The third one is it’s framing AI as a development tool. Not a dominant tool. where compute power is shared and public service is prioritized. I think this is what I look forward to.

So success is not the size of models or the size of your compute infrastructure, but how many lives we are able to change. And are we able to do that in a way that no one is left behind, right? It’s inclusive. Brilliant. Anything you all want to add? Any different thoughts, Mr. Petra and then Ms. Lawson?

Yeah, just a very short on this. I just want to add three more. But the first one I think is similar like colleagues from Egypt. In the next five years, AI should be accessible. That’s the first one. And the second one, for the global south countries, AI must solve the problem. That’s the most important. And the third one, I think AI, need to be trusted. trusted yeah need to be trusted so it need to comply with the transparency and accountability standard so no more AI deep fake can cheat people yeah so because people have good awareness on this AI product especially generative AI like AI deep fake or synthetic reality that produced by this AI machines so I think that three points we can give mark whether this AI workable in the society or it’s become a disaster to the

I cannot agree more with you on all three but I think the one that is most important is trust because if it’s not trustworthy it’ll never be adopted it’ll never be used so I think that is brilliant brilliant point Ms. Lawson the last words to you

I would echo what has been said and for me success would be I think If five years from now, every Togolese is one phone call away to access any public services, right? And so that’s how I’m going. Personally, I’m going to measure success with regards to AI in Togo because then it talks to the people, right? Because so far we’ve been talking about digital transformation, which was really going from paper to screen. But what is going to be a real game changer is if I can talk to the machine and the machine can reply and so on. So that’s one thing. And obviously, the comment about trust is a very important one. We are a very young continent.

Half of the African population is less than 18 years old and 75 % is less than 35. And so it’s very important for us to have a trusted AI. AI infrastructure and so on. And so there’s a lot of work that we need to do. We didn’t mention to have also standards and platform for data exchange, which is going to be extremely crucial in our relationship with the global north. So these are really important issues that we need to tackle if we want to be successful five years from now.

I think that’s very, very well put. And, you know, this was, ladies and gentlemen, such a powerful discussion because what’s coming out of it is how despite all the differences between countries, I think governments today are thinking very similarly about artificial intelligence. Its success, again, is not about the size of your infrastructure, but about how many lives changed. And in order to scale transformation of lives, you need to ensure your technology. It’s trustworthy. You need to ensure it’s inclusive by design. You need to invest in capacity development, innovation. And it’s fantastic to see everyone thinking along the same lines because it really. brings to forward the importance of collective action and collaboration and I think that’s what has come out of this summit.

So with that, thank you to all three of you and please give them a huge round of applause. Thank you.