The Atomic Human and Africa’s Digital Future

Henry Ford’s Faster Horse

Artificial General Vehicle

The Atomic Human

Embodiment Factors

New Flow of Information

Evolved Relationship

Evolved Relationship

Blake’s Newton

Lunette Rehoboam Abijah

People, Communication and Culture

.

The MONIAC

Human Analogue Machine

HAM

Bandwidth vs Complexity

bits/min	\(100 \times 10^{-9}\)	\(2,000\)	\(600 \times 10^9\)

The Atomic Human and Africa’s Digital Future

• Bandwidth limitations between humans and machines
• Africa’s unique opportunity to leapfrog legacy approaches
  
• Building institutions that grow from within

Bandwidth and Cultural Intelligence

• Human bandwidth: 2000 bits per minute
• Culture: provides landscape in which we communicate
• Different nations, tribes, towns and villages have different culture

Challenge for Africa

• Challenge for Africa
• Western institutions imposed
• Evolved in different cultural context

The Human Analogue Machine

Africa’s HAM Advantage

• HAM: New interface between humans and digital systems
• Existing companies built for old information flows
• Opportunity to leapfrog legacy systems

“Path Dependence”: The Legacy Disadvantage

• Established companies: using old paradigms
• Legacy systems resist fundamental change
• Sunk costs in outdated approaches: e.g. Bezos API Mandate

Africa’s Leapfrog Moments

• Less legacy infrastructure to abandon
• Opportunity to align with culture
• Opportunity to set global standards

Imposed vs Organic Institutions

• Innovation high, quality often low in Africa
• Root cause: institutional mismatch
• Imposed structures vs natural strengths

The Cost of Institutional Mismatch

• Energy wasted on adaptation to foreign models
• Local strengths underutilised
• Sustainable impact limited

The Path Forward

• Start with cultural strengths
• Design institutions that amplify existing capabilities
• Export success models rather than importing failure patterns

The AI Race

• International media talks of an AI race
• Such a race can only be a race to the bottom.
• In reality theirs an opportunity to reset.

The Five Ps Framework

• Purpose: Shared idea around which everything revolves
• People: Convene around purpose
• Projects: Actionable outcomes with individual agreement

Principles and Process

• Principles: Capture what works, guide future directions
• Process: Necessary for sustainability in institutions
• Balance: Keep process and purpose aligned

DSA: The 5 Ps Model in Action

• People first: John Quinn, Ernest Mwebaze, organic networks
• Projects emerged: crop surveillance, malaria prediction
• Purpose crystallized: African-led data science capacity

The Origins of Data Science Africa

• 2005: Meeting John Quinn at NeurIPS
• 2010: Ernest Mwebaze presents crop surveillance work at Dagstuhl
• 2013: First collaboration - Gaussian Process school in Kampala

Fundamentals That Work

• Focus on what actually works in practice
• End-to-end thinking: farmer’s field to ministry
• Local context and partnerships matter
• Avoiding harmful international interventions

From People to Projects to Purpose

• Started with relationships and curiosity
• Projects emerged from local needs
• Purpose crystallized through collaboration
• Natural evolution, not imposed structure

Data Science Africa is a bottom up initiative for capacity building in data science, machine learning and AI on the African continent

Principles from Practice

• “Fundamentals that work” over theoretical ideals
• Prioritise commitment over hierarchy.
• Avoiding harmful international interventions

Propagating the Model

• The 5 Ps framework emerged from DSA
• Cultural alignment with organic institution building
• Opportunity to scale across the continent

DSA: The Next Ten Years

• 2015-2025: Foundation decade
• 2025-2035: Global leadership decade
• From catching up to setting direction

Capability to Leadership

• Local solutions with global relevance
• African models for human-AI collaboration
  
• Build talent and Export frameworks

Institutional Generation

• New institutions for a new era
• THe Continent is perfectly positioned to lead

Conclusion: Africa’s Turn to Lead

• The HAM is a new paradigm in computing
• Africa can leapfrog to human-centered technology
• DSA is at the heart of the revolution