Artificial Intelligence in Africa

The legal profession is facing a major transformation thanks to the rise of AI, and Large Language Models (LLM) are one of the most promising AI technologies for the legal industry. LLMs are machine learning models that are trained on massive datasets of text and code. This allows them to learn the statistical relationships between words and phrases, and to generate text that is both coherent and grammatically correct. LLMs can be used for a variety of legal research tasks, such as automating the process of legal research, identifying and monitoring relevant laws, analysing and translating complex legal documents, and generating creative legal arguments. LLMs can also be used to generate answers to legal questions, develop predictive analytics tools that can help legal departments

Meanwhile the new Nigerian Minister for the digital economy is seeking out the country’s top AI researchers as part of a process of developing a national strategy. The ministry has published an initial list of 100 people of Nigerian descent sourced from a search for researchers published in international AI journals and sifted for citation count and experience by machine learning algorithms. The move, which some have questioned for prioritizing academic researchers over private sector AI practitioners, is one of the new government’s first acts to oversee Nigeria’s technology sector. A whitepaper shared by the ministry on social media, claims that recent research showed that AI could contribute up to $15.7tn to the global economy by the year 2030 with $3tn from increased productivity and $9.1tn from new products and services.