From 30 to 31 October 2024, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) team showcased and presented their innovative solutions and technologies at the seventh AI Expo Africa Conference, which was hosted at the Sandton Convention Centre in Gauteng, South Africa. 

The AI Expo Africa is a mainstay event on the calendar for AI practitioners and technology enthusiasts across the African continent, boasting a community of over fifty thousand members. With the rapid increase in attention placed on AI and the successes of the previous six annual events, the 7th edition of the AI Expo Africa became one of the largest business gatherings of its kind on the African content, attended by enterprise buyers, government stakeholders, private sector decision makers, international trade missions, vendors, small, medium and micro enterprises and global brands, all focused on real-world business applications that can add value to businesses and operations. 

The CSIR stand was manned by members of the Networked Systems and Applications (NSA) within the NGEI cluster: Dr Avashna Govender, Dr Moshe Masonta, Avi Moodley, Privolin Naidoo, Thoriso Maphanga, Sthembiso Mkhwanazi and were supported by Obakeng Ratlhogo and Sipho Dikweni. The Natural Language Processing (NLP), Spectrum Access and Management Innovation as well as Cloud and Network Architecture and Services (CNAS) research groups, showcased their technologies and interacted with various stakeholders, technology enthusiasts, peers, potential partners and existing collaborators to demonstrate our capabilities and uncover new opportunities to be explored for mutual benefit and impact. Technologies on display included Qfrency Text-to-Speech, Ngiyaqonda, NextGen NLP, fifth generation (5G) and dynamic spectrum slicing. 

Avi Moodley Principal AI Specialist at the CSIR said, “the AI Expo Africa is a great place to find new clients and partners, learn about local trends and find new markets. Our technologies have been maturing over the past decade and the private sector pull factor has finally emerged and is now clearly evident. This event provided us with an opportunity to engage with private sector attendees and demonstrate CSIR's expertise in AI and NLP.

Furthermore, “we have strategically positioned the CSIR as a trusted innovation partner that plays the role of enablers in assisting the private sector in adopting NLP and AI solutions within their environments to reap the benefits with reduced organisational risk. The CSIR's wealth of experts and knowledge, coupled with the DSTI R&D tax incentive, raised awareness and created excitement around collaboration with us for most attendees that we engaged with,” said Avi Moodley Principal AI Specialist at the CSIR.

He further emphasised that the exhibitions and presentations by the team raised the profile of the CSIR in the private sector and they hope to benefit from more productive engagements from their interactions with the attendees.

CSIR’s NLP researcher, Sthembiso Mkhwanazi presented a poster titled "Breaking Down isiZulu texts: Supervised Segmentation for Better Language Modelling  and Translation" which discussed novel research aimed at addressing critical challenges that the NLP research group are tackling to break down language barriers and promote digital inclusion for isiZulu speaking South Africans. Approximately 30% of South African citizens speak isiZulu as their primary language and are prevented from participating in the digital economy due to the language barrier that exists. He engaged in various discussions with private sector attendees which raised awareness and interest in the language technologies created within the NLP research group. 

On the second day of the conference, Gauteng Premier Panyaza Lesufi, visited the CSIR stand and engaged with the team on the technologies on display.

The primary aim of the CSIR is to ensure that we continue to leverage our wealth of science, engineering, technology and innovation capabilities to improve industry competitiveness. Thus, it is important to showcase our offerings at conferences of this calibre.

“It was a great experience for team CSIR to showcase our technology offerings at the AI Africa Expo 2024. This event offers a great opportunity for us to network with the peers and establish new business contacts within our industry”, said Dr Moshe Masonta.