Data and the power of Artificial Intelligence on Africa’s development

Unreliable and incomplete data is at the heart of Africa’s underdevelopment. For the past 60 years, successive African governments (apart from only a handful of countries) have paid very little attention to the collection and retention of reliable development data necessary for planning and policy implementation purposes. The implication is that key development policies, meant to promote economic growth, are implemented without any evidence of the economic needs for those policies. In fact, most of the policies are implemented because of political rather than economic necessities. During election campaigns, unscrupulous African politicians promise the citizens everything and anything which can win them votes. For instance, in 2016, the New Patriotic Party (NPP) of Ghana promised voters that if the party wins the election, it will ensure that every district in Ghana gets a factory and that every village gets a dam for irrigation. This was done without any needs assessment to determine whether this was necessary to promote economic development for the country. These two policies, subsequently, played a significant part in the NPP winning the elections and forming the next government even though the party had no intention of implementing the policies.