Independent consultant and blogger in Dar es Salaam
Does Tanzania have the intellectual, social and spiritual resources to cope proactively with the encounter with artificial intelligence? Yes.
But that is a yes that depends on an understanding of the roles of scarcity, illogic and chaos in the emergence and sustenance of resilience, vitality and creativity. We have all six of these attributes in abundance in Africa and in Tanzania. That is what might just carry us through whatever is ahead of us in this brave, new world.
“Necessity is the mother of invention.” According to Wikipedia, this proverb can trace its roots — at least in Europe — to one of Aesop’s fables through to an appearance in Plato’s Republic and on to a “loose translation” published in 1894 by one Benjamin Jowett (Oxford dude, theologian, fan of Plato and Thucydides) who rendered it as: “The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention.”
I like that. So much of human endeavour fits into that one neat phrase. As for the year of publication, just a decade after the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884-1885.
Tanzania is intimately familiar with scarcity. I recently found out that the 1980s are considered “Africa’s lost decade” and have childhood memories to give life to this assertion. Like the taste of donated American yellow cornmeal, a crop that is apparently grown to feed livestock, but that makes tasty porridge. And this was coming after the Ujamaa years, the very expensive Kagera War, both detrimental to the economy.
All this happening to the progeny of those who both participated in, profited from, and were decimated by the Indian Ocean slave trade.
The slave trade introduced an abiding chaos to our societies, as did subsequent European colonialism. Then there is our post-colonial leadership class: Need I say more?
Yet here we are today, in the middle a population explosion driven by the benefits of modern science, contemplating what may come with AI. I have focused on all the ways in which AI might impact us due to our vulnerabilities for good reason. It is in my nature to seek out the threats in most situations because, like a dik-dik, I am small and nervously trying to live in the underbrush of my lush society and complex world. But caution is a form of optimism and it makes for smart opportunism. We are the products of history and circumstances that encourage resilience, vitality, and creativity.
Consider: Our slightly grey moral codes and abundance of trickster stories probably come from centuries of experience. Two sides of the same coin: Sungura Mjanja and Abunuasi are manifestations of the same wild intellect that produces village kids who invent power generation solutions using two sticks, a retired geography teacher and an outdated chemistry textbook.
I don’t doubt that AI will disrupt Tanzania, if it isn’t already doing so. But this is Africa. We have more than enough of the gifts of necessity, the “true creator” on our side. I’ve to trust that we’ll find a way to domesticate and maybe repurpose, and even subvert, this new technology. All while creating irresistible music that will export our delightful culture to the world, as we always have.
Elsie Eyakuze is an independent consultant and blogger for The Mikocheni Report; Email [email protected]
