The German Development Cooperation initiative FAIR Forward – Artificial Intelligence for All strives for an open, inclusive and sustainable approach to AI on an international level by working together with five partner countries - Ghana, Rwanda, South Africa, Uganda, and India. The initiative is part of Germany’s AI strategy, commissioned by the German Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and implemented by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmBH. India and Germany have committed to increase cooperation on Artificial Intelligence: Both nations have issued a joint statement which showcases the strengthening of cooperation in the field of AI and digital transformation.

The initiative is pursuing three main goals:

• Strengthen local technical know-how on AI – With capacity development plans in Africa and Asia, the initiative supports digital learning and training for the development and use of AI, fostering cooperation with German and other European research institutions and businesses.
• Remove Entry Barriers to AI – FAIR Forward facilitates access to open, non-discriminatory and inclusive training data and open source AI applications. Open access to African and Asian language data is a key priority to enable the development of AI-based voice interaction in local languages to empower marginalized groups.
• Develop Policy Frameworks Ready for AI – Ethical AI, data protection and privacy are the cornerstones of good AI systems; and based on these principles, the initiative advocates for value-based AI rooted in human rights, international norms such as accountability, transparency of decision-making and privacy. It draws on the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and supports the development of effective political and regulatory frameworks in Africa and Asia.

Building Local Language and Open Datasets in India

In India, FAIR Forward is engaging with a wide variety of AI stakeholders from academia, government, and the private sector to strengthen the Indian AI community. Moreover, the initiative supports the development of open datasets and AI solutions to address local challenges and to contribute to the achievement of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) of the UN 2030 Agenda. One focus area is to create open voice datasets in Indian languages. This way, open voice technologies can be developed to make digital technology more inclusive. Open datasets create a potential market for tech innovators and social entrepreneurs. As a first step, FAIR Forward identifies and collects existing open voice datasets in Indian languages to make them usable. In the next step, gaps in voice data can be addressed.

Promoting Responsible AI

Another important area of focus is to promote the responsible and ethical development and use of AI. FAIR Forward works together with stakeholders from various sectors to develop practical guidelines for AI developers in India to adhere to international standards of data protection, privacy and AI ethics. This shall be an ongoing process and updated based on India’s laws on data privacy and regulatory frameworks on data protection.

Here are some examples of FAIR Forward’s activities in Africa:

Voice Recognition in Rwanda: The FAIR Forward initiative supports the local start-up Digital Umuganda to coordinate the development of voice interaction technologies in the country’s national language, Kinyarwanda. As a first step, Digital Umuganda collects speech data in Kinyarwanda from volunteers during the state wide, monthly community work day Umuganda. So far, 1,200 hours of voice data in Kinyarwanda have been collected via the Mozilla “CommonVoice” platform. This creates opportunities to develop services built on human-machine interaction in the local language, such as in information hotlines or automated customer services.

AI Blueprint with Smart Africa: Smart Africa, a Pan-African digitalisation initiative with 30 member countries, has been a long-term partner of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development. The AI blueprint is being developed in a multi-stakeholder process including Smart Africa member countries, civil society and businesses. The process is championed by the Government of South Africa.

Expansion of AI training data in the Global South: Lacuna Fund: In supporting Lacuna Fund, FAIR Forward is part of the first global collaborative effort that addresses the shortage of AI training data in emerging and developing countries. The work of Lacuna Fund creates representative, problem-specific and current data in the Global South, and Fair Forward works closely with The Rockefeller Foundation, Google.org, and Canada’s International Development Research Centre.

Africa AI Accelerator: FAIR Forward promotes local AI and machine learning innovations in its African partner countries. Together with the tech entrepreneurship initiative ‘Make-IT in Africa’, innovation experts of the Ghana Tech Lab and IBM, the programme virtually and physically would support AI start-ups from Ghana, South Africa, Rwanda, and Uganda. Overall, ten start-ups would receive advice on improving their technical product and business development as well as team processes along clearly measurable goals. The AI Accelerator is in advanced stages.

To know more about FAIR Forward, write to fairforward@giz.de