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The Co-Founder of AI for Developing Countries Forum (AIFOD), Tianze Zhang, has stated that developing countries must reform their educational system to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI).
He said AI had the potential to help people grow their interest, take their examinations and write their reports with precision.
“The education system needs to rethink the balance between the AI and humans in the role of AI and humans in education development,” Mr Zhang stated in an interview with the Daily Graphic on the outcomes of the AIFOD Vienna Summit at the United Nations Office.
Mr Zhang spoke on the role of AI in developing countries and stressed the need to scale up investment, noting that these countries currently receive less than one per cent of global AI funding. He emphasised the importance of strategies to redirect capital flows towards them.
A total of 600 delegates from 120+ countries established groundbreaking frameworks to redirect $1.2 trillion in AI investments towards emerging markets.
These markets are experiencing remarkable growth rates of 28-34 per cent annually, significantly outpacing the 19 per cent growth in developed economies.
AIFOD is an independent global forum of more than 5,600 members dedicated to democratising AI for developing nations through strategic public–private partnerships.
The initiative seeks to bridge the gap between developed and developing countries, foster inclusive growth, and empower the Global South to be creators rather than mere consumers of AI technologies.
On ethical standards, Mr Zhang urged developing countries to localise AI to align it to their culture, by developing their own AI tools with the languages that could better preserve their cultures.
“We are helping communities to understand how to develop their own AI, and we are helping them to attract funding from the private sector,” Mr Zhang explained.
He, therefore, advised developing countries not to rely on the big players in AI, stressing that every country should have a different approach to developing AI.
He said his organisation was focused on creating a level playing field to ensure fairness for developing countries, adding that AI was revolutionising the work environment.
Mr Zhang observed that AI was depriving many people of their jobs, as was evidenced in the areas of legal fields, medical fields and consulting fields as well.
“This will create a huge disparity for the developing countries, where, for sure, more jobs will be deprived at a competitive level,” he added.
He called for more education in AI management, so that within the next 10 years, developing countries could catch up in AI.
Mr Zhang said the key issue at the end of the Vienna Summit was whether developing countries should prioritise investment in application or in infrastructure.
He said the consensus was that the situation must change to establish fairer standards that would help developing countries enter the AI market ethically.
“We now need to switch from the view of the scales of investment to a more holistic approach, about social values, about the community values, about the cultural values.
“This is very important and so, with AIFOD fair standards, we evaluate three pillars for AI investment in developing countries,” he said and enumerated them as data sovereignty, ethical investment and sustainable impacts.
“So, these are the values that we hope the developing countries or the companies to consider when they are building the AI; they need to think about,” he said.
Mr Zhang said, considering that the China-US market was saturating, the developing countries were the future of tomorrow, but expressed worry that billions of people lacked computer literacy and also in AI tools.
He said the new market needed education to give them more opportunities and enable them to afford the AI tools.
Mr Zhang, therefore, advised AI developers to make their AI products more accessible and affordable for people in developing countries.
“We hope the companies come to Africa ethically and not just to literally dig the gold and leave the trenches," he explained.
