When the world gets closer.

We help you see farther.

Sign up to our expressly international daily newsletter.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch
Ghana

How Facial Recognition Technology Is Different In Africa

There's a reason many Africans are wary of the identification technology: It doesn't work as well for people with dark skin. That's where Charlette N'Guessan, a young Ivorian researcher, comes in.

Charlette N'Guessan's chosen field, facial recognition, is largely unexplored in Africa
Charlette N'Guessan's chosen field, facial recognition, is largely unexplored in Africa
Marie de Vergès

ACCRA — She's not ashamed to say it: The coronavirus pandemic has been "a very good thing" for Charlette N'Guessan. The same goes for Africa's forward-looking tech entrepreneurs in general.

"With the challenges posed by COVID-19, the continent is waking up," the young Ivorian says. "People are thinking innovation, ideas, change. This crisis gives credibility to what we are doing."

It must be said that N'Guessan's chosen field — facial recognition — is largely unexplored in Africa. It also arouses a fair amount of suspicion, and for good reason: Existing algorithms, including the best out there, are less accurate at identifying individuals of color, as tests conducted in the United States have revealed an error rate five to 10 times higher for these populations.

It was partly to correct these biases that the 27-year-old N'Guessan joined forces in 2018 with three other computer engineers. They met at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) incubator in Accra, Ghana, where she was undergoing training in coding and entrepreneurship.

The start-up they founded has developed its own software, Bace API. To ensure that it would perform well with dark skin tones and be adaptable to the local market, the team relied on a very diverse data set, including a large sample of sub-Saharan African faces.

"In the beginning, we even practiced on the other members of the incubator," N'Guessan recalls with a laugh.

Cybersecurity is a problem everywhere in Africa and even more so in the financial sector.

The development of this solution is intended to respond to very concrete issues. In 2017, cybercrimes cost African economies $3.5 billion, according to the Kenyan-based consulting firm Serianu.

"Cybersecurity is a problem everywhere in Africa and even more so in the financial sector, because in our countries we have gone directly from cash to digital," says N'Guessan.

Ghanaian financial institutions are facing a massive problem of identity theft, and are losing hundreds of millions of dollars per year as a result, according to N'Guessan and her colleagues. To help combat the problem, Bace API provides banks and FinTech companies with a system to verify the identity of customers remotely using "live" (moving) photos to ensure that the person is real and not a robot.

This achievement earned N'Guessan the Africa Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering, a prestigious British institution that issues annual prizes for innovation. The recognition provided a welcome boost for the start-up, as did the grant money (nearly 28,000 euros) that came with the award.

Born in Abidjan, the Ivory Coast's largest city, Charlette — "with an e, not an o," she says — grew up in the working-class neighborhood of Yopougon. Her father was a math teacher, and she has five sisters, all with the same first name... Charlette! "But each of us was given a middle name," she explains.

N'Guessan at the Meltwater Entrepreneurial School of Technology (MEST) incubator— Photo: Charlette N'Guessan Twitter

"I've always been encouraged to follow my path and to dream of great things," she says. "Probably because we were only girls at home, my father didn't see why we would have less interesting career plans than boys."

After studies in electronics and computer networks and internships in companies in the Plateau, Abidjan's business district, Charlette N'Guessan was selected to train at the renowned MEST incubator. She is one of the few French speakers to join.

It is in Ghana that she chose to focus on facial recognition, a discipline derived from Artificial Intelligence (AI). She says this decision was a gamble, as the technology, perceived as discriminatory, is the subject of much debate in Africa. What's more, fingerprint identification is already well ahead in many African countries. But the health crisis is changing that.

"Today, with what we have just gone through, everyone wants to have access to their services remotely," says N'Guessan.

She sees prospects in many areas: from education (with the implementation of online testing platforms) to individual passenger transportation (to facilitate the hiring of drivers) and public services, such as electoral processes that require extensive voter registration.

"We need more "made in Africa" solutions instead of products from elsewhere"

At present, Africa is lagging behind in the creation of start-ups and AI technologies. A Stanford University report suggests that as of 2018, the bulk of AI investment was concentrated in 20 countries around the world. Not one of those countries is in Africa.

Nevertheless, a few centers of excellence are beginning to emerge there. In Ghana, Google opened its first African AI research laboratory in early 2019. And in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences has launched a master's program dedicated to machine learning and AI, in partnership with Facebook and Google.

"We need more "made in Africa" solutions instead of products from elsewhere," says N'Guessan.

This plea echoes fears expressed across the continent, where people are concerned in particular over China deploying its surveillance technologies. In Zimbabwe, for example, the government has signed a cooperative agreement with CloudWalk Technology, the Chinese leader in the sector, to implement facial recognition on a large scale. And Huawei has developed numerous partnerships with various African countries to develop its "safe city" initiative, a project to "secure" cities through installing smart cameras.

For "ethical" reasons, Charlette N'Guessan does not want to venture into this field of public and police video surveillance. But there are plenty of other areas, she believes, where technologies developed by and for Africans can be of great use.

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Economy

Lex Tusk? How Poland’s Controversial "Russian Influence" Law Will Subvert Democracy

The new “lex Tusk” includes language about companies and their management. But is this likely to be a fair investigation into breaking sanctions on Russia, or a political witch-hunt in the business sphere?

Photo of President of the Republic of Poland Andrzej Duda

Polish President Andrzej Duda

Piotr Miaczynski, Leszek Kostrzewski

-Analysis-

WARSAW — Poland’s new Commission for investigating Russian influence, which President Andrzej Duda signed into law on Monday, will be able to summon representatives of any company for inquiry. It has sparked a major controversy in Polish politics, as political opponents of the government warn that the Commission has been given near absolute power to investigate and punish any citizen, business or organization.

And opposition politicians are expected to be high on the list of would-be suspects, starting with Donald Tusk, who is challenging the ruling PiS government to return to the presidency next fall. For that reason, it has been sardonically dubbed: Lex Tusk.

University of Warsaw law professor Michal Romanowski notes that the interests of any firm can be considered favorable to Russia. “These are instruments which the likes of Putin and Orban would not be ashamed of," Romanowski said.

The law on the Commission for examining Russian influences has "atomic" prerogatives sewn into it. Nine members of the Commission with the rank of secretary of state will be able to summon virtually anyone, with the powers of severe punishment.

Under the new law, these Commissioners will become arbiters of nearly absolute power, and will be able to use the resources of nearly any organ of the state, including the secret services, in order to demand access to every available document. They will be able to prosecute people for acts which were not prohibited at the time they were committed.

Their prerogatives are broader than that of the President or the Prime Minister, wider than those of any court. And there is virtually no oversight over their actions.

Nobody can feel safe. This includes companies, their management, lawyers, journalists, and trade unionists.

Keep reading...Show less

You've reached your limit of free articles.

To read the full story, start your free trial today.

Get unlimited access. Cancel anytime.

Exclusive coverage from the world's top sources, in English for the first time.

Insights from the widest range of perspectives, languages and countries.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

You've reach your limit of free articles.

Get unlimited access to Worldcrunch

You can cancel anytime.

SUBSCRIBERS BENEFITS

Ad-free experience NEW

Exclusive international news coverage

Access to Worldcrunch archives

Monthly Access

30-day free trial, then $2.90 per month.

Annual Access BEST VALUE

$19.90 per year, save $14.90 compared to monthly billing.save $14.90.

Subscribe to Worldcrunch

The latest