Musaazi Namiti
Last week, the Uganda Communications Commission (UCC) unveiled a task force that will guide Uganda on the effective use of Artificial Intelligence (AI), defined as a way computers perform tasks that usually need human intelligence.
The task force could not have come at a better time. Uganda needs AI because its people, like in many developing countries, do not work smart to be productive; they work hard to be productive.
The problem with this approach is that it takes an awful lot of time to produce results. You cannot get through tonnes of work in a short time. You can barely work efficiently and effectively.
Technology, which has given us AI, enables us to work smart to enhance productivity. However, in Uganda, we still have challenges to grapple with — and the task force has to explore ways of overcoming or working around those challenges.
The first challenge is poverty. Many Ugandans only have access to free technology, but free technology does not come with the functionality and rich features that drive productivity. Technology and its cousin AI greatly benefit people with money because they go for the best apps needed to turbocharge productivity.
A second challenge — and this is probably more serious — is that while schools teach ICT (and we have a ministry in charge of ICT), they have not embraced information technology in the real sense.
You see this problem in how schools, which should be the starting point for embracing technology, operate.
A school sends a circular to, say, 1,500 parents and does everything manually. There are free AI chatbots that need only prompts to craft a circular, but a head teacher will spend time composing the circular.
The circular is then printed and photocopied, meaning a lot of paper is wasted and the environment is adversely affected. The copies are put in envelopes and handed to pupils/students to deliver to their parents.
The entire process wastes time and money. The same task can be performed easily and quickly by collecting email addresses of all parents and delivering the circular electronically.
And this comes with advantages. The circular will be on the parents’ computers or — to use tech speak — in the cloud forever. The excuse that some parents do not have desktops or laptops does not hold water because many use hand-held computers called smartphones.
The circular can be easily accessed. You do not have to check the drawer at home to look at it. And the school spends less money and time on the circular.
To be fair, some schools use technology. But many teachers’ tech skills do not extend far beyond WhatsApp. You cannot make a presentation on WhatsApp as you would with PowerPoint, and the app remains a largely informal messaging platform.
Schools seeking to be tech-savvy need to take full advantage of Office 365 Education for the classroom. It is free. All they need is to sign up, and the package includes online Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Microsoft Teams and Microsoft Copilot.
Microsoft Copilot, powered by AI, has become a helpful robot friend that works on your computer and can help you write emails, find information and do tasks faster by giving you smart suggestions and answers. Copilot is integrated in many Microsoft 365 products, and anyone who wants to see productivity enhanced in their organisation cannot ignore it.
But as I have already mentioned, this software has to be bought. (The free version will not do the heavy lifting for you.) You can imagine the level of productivity we can attain if every public and private office uses this technology.
Mr Namiti is a journalist and former
Al Jazeera digital editor in charge of the Africa desk
[email protected] @kazbuk
