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IBM Brings Watson to Africa for Project Lucy

Using cognitive systems to tackle a continent’s grand challenges

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IBM & Cognitive In The News

Lucy is the name given to the earliest known human descendant, whose remains were discovered in Africa 40 years ago. Today, IBM Watson, the first cognitive computing system, is coming to Africa as part of a 10-year, $100 million initiative to address the fast-growing continent's greatest business and societal challenges. With "Project Lucy", IBM researchers in Africa, together with their business and academic partners, will use Watson and related cognitive technologies to learn and discover insights from Big Data and develop commercially viable solutions to Africa’s grand challenges in healthcare, education, water and sanitation, human mobility and agriculture.

With 60% of the world's uncultivated arable land Africa has immense opportunity for expanded food production. In Africa, there is one doctor for every 2,000 people. $50 Billion was invested in Africa's infrastructure build out in 2012. Nearly one-third of Kenya's GDP is transferred through mobile payment systems,

“In the past decade, Africa has been a tremendous growth story, yet the continent’s challenges, stemming from population growth, water scarcity, disease, low agricultural yield and other factors are impediments to inclusive economic growth,” said Kamal Bhattacharya, director, IBM Research – Africa.

“With the ability to learn from emerging patterns and discover new correlations, Watson’s cognitive capabilities hold enormous potential in Africa — helping it to achieve in the next two decades what today’s developed markets have achieved over two centuries.”