INFOGRAPHIC
How South Africa can benefit from AI use cases
AI is no silver bullet , but it certainly can make a transformative contribution to easing societal difficulties in South Africa , notably in four key areas , healthcare , education , financial inclusion and agriculture .
Healthcare
The healthcare system in South Africa faces several challenges . Both public and private sectors are involved in healthcare provision , with ~ 70 % public and ~ 30 % private . The key issues facing the healthcare system include obstacles to accessing care and affordable medicines , variable quality in the care provided , inadequate funding , and insufficient staff , particularly in the public sector . AI can function as an assistant , transcribing and summarising each consultation , and automatically keeping patient records regularly updated . That will enable doctors and nurses to spend less time on admin istrative tasks and more time on patients .
AI can also support personalised diagnosis and treatment recommendations for patients , by using AI-driven analyses of data and taking account of available inventory in hospital pharmacies . This support for diagnosis and treatment , and the alignment on available drugs , will again free up time for doctors to spend with patients , and will improve patient care and experience .
Education
Education in South Africa is characterised by severe disparities between private and public schools . Public schooling in general suffers from teacher shortages and under-funding , especially in rural areas .
Teachers often lack appropriate resources , including Internet access ; and many students face hunger and a lack of parental support . By analysing vast amounts of data , AI can inform policy decisions and syllabus design , and create learning materials .
AI can be used to create a conversational tutor , which would enhance student interactions , and also enable better access to resources . Through naturallanguage processing , AI-powered conversational tutors can make sense of students ’ questions and navi gate intricate knowledge repositories to retrieve relevant information .
Financial inclusion
Recent efforts to expand financial inclusion in South Africa have met with some success , but far more remains to be done to improve people ’ s financial literacy , money management , and access to economic opportunities . Banks struggle to assess creditworthiness for many customers who cannot provide the traditional metrics .
AI can make financial services more accessible to customers . By deploying AI-powered chatbots to handle routine client queries and provide timely
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