Africa Is Ready for AI. Access Will Determine Who Benefits.
Meet the SystInfo team helping African researchers build the skills, confidence, and tools to participate in the future of AI.
Across Africa, artificial intelligence is reaching a pivotal moment. Universities, researchers, governments, and professionals are exploring how it could strengthen research, expand access to information, and help address locally significant problems.
The African Union has made AI a strategic priority through its Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy, which calls for investment in skills, infrastructure, research, governance, and African-led innovation.
But ambition and access are not the same thing.
According to UNESCO, internet penetration across Africa is approximately 37%, compared with a global average of 67%. Only around 5% of African AI researchers report having access to the computing resources required for modern AI development. Language, training, institutional support, and trust create further barriers.
These gaps affect more than who can build AI. They also shape who can use it effectively and who can benefit from the knowledge it makes easier to find.
Making AI useful, not simply available
In Burkina Faso, SystInfo is working to close the distance between interest in AI and the ability to use it well.
Its mission is to make AI accessible across Africa in a form that is comprehensive and understandable, helping university researchers and educators avoid “missing the AI train.”
SystInfo trains professors, students, researchers, public-service employees, and other professionals in AI, data analysis, and scientific research methods. Its programs have reached participants from Burkina Faso and other African countries working across health, economics, law, information governance, and culture.
The demand is strong. SystInfo has trained university faculty leaders in Ouagadougou and continues to receive requests from the academic community. But its trainers also encounter uncertainty, particularly among people whose first experience with AI came through general-purpose tools such as ChatGPT.
Some participants had attempted to use those tools for literature reviews and received references that did not exist. Experiences like these can quickly damage trust—not only in one platform, but in AI-assisted research more broadly.
Assetou Zongo
Statistician/Computer Scientist and Educator at Systinfo
“In Africa, when people hear ‘AI,’ most think of ChatGPT. Some have tried to use it for literature reviews and received fabricated references. With Consensus, participants could see that the sources were real and verifiable, and they began to trust AI.”
SystInfo therefore begins its training with ethics. Participants learn how hallucinations occur, how to verify outputs, why sensitive data must be protected, and how to select the right tool for a particular task.
The goal is not simply to encourage people to use AI. It is to help them use it critically and confidently while maintaining human judgment.
When evidence remains out of reach
For many African researchers, conducting a literature review is not only slow. Limited institutional subscriptions can leave important research behind paywalls, while complex databases and specialized search methods create additional barriers.
SystInfo’s team knows this burden firsthand. When Seydou Toguiyen returned to academia to pursue a thesis, the literature review nearly stopped him.
“The literature review was exhausting. It almost made me lose motivation,” Toguiyen recalled.
While working on a paper examining the use of mobile phones in epidemiological surveillance, cardiologist and university educator Dr. Boukary Ouedraogo faced a similar challenge:
“I spent an entire year on the literature review alone,” Ouedraogo said.
Their experiences reflect a wider imbalance. Researchers may be capable of contributing important knowledge but still lack a straightforward way to find, assess, and navigate the existing evidence.
A clearer path into the scientific literature
Consensus gave SystInfo a way to introduce AI without separating researchers from scientific sources. Researchers can ask questions in natural language, discover relevant studies, inspect the papers behind a synthesis, and follow every citation back to its source.
Consensus searches more than 220 million peer-reviewed papers. Through partnerships with academic publishers, it can also analyze the full text of many paywalled articles rather than relying only on titles and abstracts.
This does not remove the paywall: researchers may still need an institutional or personal subscription to read or download the complete article. But it can help them determine which studies are relevant, understand the evidence they contain, and decide which papers they need to pursue.
For Assetou Zongo, a statistician, computer scientist, and educator at SystInfo, participants’ first response to this new research process was not simply excitement.
One BootCamp participant described that shift in concrete terms:
“I had been working on a literature review for three months. With Consensus, I was able to complete it in 24 hours.”
This is an individual experience, not a promise that every literature review can be completed in a day or with a single click. Its importance lies in what it reveals about the burden researchers have been carrying—and what changes when they have a clearer way into the evidence.
Access requires more than technology
During the BootCamp, SystInfo’s trainers introduced participants to Deep Search, Zotero integration, research-gap suggestions, and tools for locating supporting information within individual papers.
Participants were also encouraged to identify African scholarship in their results. This helps researchers engage with evidence from around the world without overlooking work produced on the continent or losing sight of the local contexts in which that evidence will be applied.
Consensus does not replace reading, verification, or scholarly judgment. It helps researchers map a field, identify relevant studies, and organize evidence so that more of their time can be spent interpreting and building upon it.
And technology alone does not create access. Researchers also need training, confidence, ethical guidance, and support that reflects their institutions and research environments.
That is where SystInfo’s role is essential. Its team has trusted relationships with universities, researchers, and professionals across several African countries. It understands the questions participants bring into the classroom, from how to verify an AI-assisted answer to how to protect sensitive information.
Consensus can provide a broader path into scientific literature. SystInfo helps researchers navigate that path responsibly.
Africa is not standing outside the AI revolution, waiting to be invited in. Its researchers and educators are already building expertise, producing knowledge, and deciding how these technologies should serve their communities.
The opportunity now is to ensure they have the access and support to shape what comes next.
