Every society has a Bra Kofi.
Mine was a self-taught auto-technician at Suame Magazine in Ghana.
He could whip up carbide fireworks and several goofy but delightful gizmos.
He exuded a different kind of intelligence from the one I have encountered a lot in my adult life in lecture rooms and book pages.
He was the childhood inspiration behind our turning of milk tins into swanky cars and wood scraps into birdcages.
My TEDxBerlin talk asks a disturbing question: as we put more intelligence into machines, are we creating fewer spaces where humans learn, improvise and think together?
For Africa, the danger is even deadlier. AI can help us produce polished contracts, reports and manuals while leaving factories, farms and workshops untouched. We may automate the *façade* and neglect the engine room.
The ease with which AI can make our setups look sophisticated on the outside but hollow on the inside can actually hold us back in our industrialisation drive.
The alternative is to build for the Bra Kofis: connect tacit knowledge to sensors, credentials, capital and institutions through a new generation of cross-thinkers. Might you be one, a cross-thinker?
AI’s future should not belong only to Big Tech and the few big moneybags in Silicon Valley. It should be inherited by the MANY in Suame and beyond.
Watch the talk, then think about it: are there still some Bra Kofis in your world? Waiting to be recognised and amplified?
If so, be on the lookout: the "social edge framework" was built for that mission. We would like you onboard.
https://t.co/RpZl0LqY6m
In many countries where populist politicians lament that poor folk have been left behind, consumption gaps have recently narrowed—suggesting that lower-income households are catching up https://t.co/Dzkkhf8Z1x
BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2025 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Joel Mokyr, Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt “for having explained innovation-driven economic growth” with one half to Mokyr “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress” and the other half jointly to Aghion and Howitt “for the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.”
#NobelPrize
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Por nuestra compañera @RubLola and @SRobone &
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https://t.co/15m5Dj0nUr
BREAKING NEWS
The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the 2024 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel to Daron Acemoglu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson “for studies of how institutions are formed and affect prosperity.”
#NobelPrize