Intelligent CIO Africa Issue 116 | Page 11

NEWS

Significant capital is flowing into AI infrastructure, cloud platforms, subsea cables, fibre networks and data centres across the continent, governments are shaping AI policy, and enterprises are moving from strategy to implementation. Africa Tech Festival, the continent’ s longest running and most influential technology event, is where these conversations come together. The event unveiled an expanded speaker line-up for its 29th edition, bringing together the leaders shaping Africa’ s digital future and the decisions driving investment across the continent.

Hon. Solly Malatsi, South Africa’ s Minister of Communications & Digital Technologies, whose department is a strategic partner of the event, will offer insight into building an inclusive, globally competitive digital economy. Global technology companies are represented by Alex Okosi, Managing Director, Africa, at Google, who will speak to the scale of investment flowing into the continent’ s cloud and AI infrastructure; Emmanuel Lubanzadio, Africa Lead at OpenAI, focusing on AI adoption and readiness across African markets; and Robert Koen, Managing Director, Sub-Saharan Africa, at Amazon.

They are joined by leaders from Africa’ s telecommunications sector, including Enzo Scarcella, Chief Consumer Officer at

MTN Group; Norbert Prihoda, Chief Executive Officer of Tunisie Telecom; and Daddy Yogo Ngbabendo, Group Vice President, Solutions & Architecture at Airtel Africa.

Also joining the programme are Marcel Louw, Managing Director, Africa, at Digital Realty, bringing a data centre perspective, alongside enterprise leaders Thato Sopeng, Vice President, Information Technology, at Sasol, and Linda Oniwe, Senior Vice President, TMT, Corporate and Investment Banking, at Standard Bank Group.

Technology( MCIT) has announced the pilot launch of Bel Masry, a free Artificial Intelligence platform designed to read, transcribe and translate both Egyptian Colloquial Arabic( ECA) and Modern Standard Arabic( MSA).

Developed by MCIT’ s Applied Innovation Center( AIC), the platform forms part of Egypt’ s National AI Strategy and is aimed at advancing digital inclusion while developing technology that reflects the country’ s linguistic and cultural identity.

Bel Masry was developed to address limitations in global AI systems when interpreting the linguistic nuances, idiomatic expressions and cultural context of Egyptian Arabic.

The platform is powered by three specialised AI engines trained specifically on ECA and MSA.

Its Automatic Speech Recognition engine converts spoken Arabic into written text and supports different Egyptian dialects as well as MSA. The technology includes speaker diarisation for recordings involving multiple speakers and noise cancellation to improve transcription accuracy in real-world environments. It is also designed for integration with existing applications and enterprise systems.

A Machine Translation engine enables real-time translation between ECA and MSA and 50 foreign languages, with potential applications spanning education, cross-cultural communication and knowledge exchange.

The third component is a Text-to- Speech engine capable of converting written MSA and Egyptian Arabic into natural-sounding speech. MCIT said the technology could support applications including AI assistants, digital learning platforms, media content production and voiceenabled services. www. intelligentcio. com

INTELLIGENT CIO AFRICA

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