Dionne Searcey, As a Teen, She Loved Video Games. Now She’s Using A.I. to Try to Quash Malaria. NYTimes, Nov. 3, 2023. From the article:
While some of her cohorts are most passionate about sensor fusion or robotics, Ms. Diagne is into artificial intelligence and machine deep-learning. She helped create an award-winning networking app to meet others with similar interests — like Tinder but for tech nerds. And she founded a start-up called Afyasense (she borrowed “afya,” or health, from Swahili, an East African language) for her disease-detection projects using A.I.
“She is someone with whom talking is a pleasure due to the quality of the questions she asks and also the answers she gives,” said Ismaïla Seck, a leader in Senegal’s growing A.I. community.
Like many other young people in Africa’s tech boom, Ms. Diagne is at the center of overlapping phenomena on the continent — a growing, educated middle class raising even more educated children who, with each tap on a keyboard, have adopted a sense that the continent’s biggest problems can be solved.
Ms. Diagne wants to use A.I. to improve health outcomes in the region, a choice she made after a range of childhood illnesses landed her in Dakar hospitals, which struggled to provide consistent, quality care.
“I know the mistakes that are unfortunately made,” she said.
Ms. Diagne’s drive has earned her recognition. Her malaria project recently won an award at an A.I. conference in Ghana and a national award in Senegal for social entrepreneurship, as well as $8,000 in funding.
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