Months after Algeria declared 2023 the year of artificial intelligence, Algerian students have won first prizes in two categories of the Chinese technology company Huawei’s global competition for information and communication technologies (ICT).
The two Algerian student teams came first in the Network and Cloud tracks of the competition, and second in two other divisions, Kamel Baddari, Algeria’s minister of higher education, told Al-Fanar Media.
The students’ success comes as the nation is making strides to build its research and innovation capabilities in artificial intelligence (AI).
At the start of the year, Baddari stressed “the need to offer new university courses to teach and get ready for artificial intelligence and its use in higher education and scientific research.” He announced the establishment of a council of experts, researchers, and specialised professors to introduce artificial intelligence in the higher education and research sectors.
Mohamed Majour, a professor at the Institute of Optics and Precision Mechanics at Ferhat Abbas University Sétif 1, believes such moves are essential to keep pace with developments in higher education. He wants to expand the Research Council in Artificial Intelligence to include all researchers in the field, evaluate the year’s research, and discuss future prospects.
In April, Baddari held talks with a number of Algerian artificial intelligence experts who work abroad. They included Mohamed Senussi, a research professor at the University of Southern Denmark, Riyadh Baghdadi, an assistant professor at New York University–Abu Dhabi, and Marwan Dabbah, a senior investigator at the Institute of Technology Innovation, the research arm of Abu Dhabi’s Advanced Technology Research Council.
AI and the World’s Economies
Baghdadi told Al-Fanar Media that artificial intelligence has become the basis of the world’s economies. He believes national efforts to promote it in higher education are “the beginning of greater cohesion between Algerian researchers in the diaspora and the national academic sector.”
“One of our school’s goals is to equip engineers with basic knowledge in mathematics and a deep theoretical understanding of technologies like artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship, as well as the practical skills that help them keep pace with the labour market inside and outside Algeria.”
Souad Hadli, a researcher at Algeria’s National School of Artificial Intelligence (ENSIA)
In the 2021–2022 academic year, Algeria opened the National School for Artificial Intelligence (ENSIA) to receive high school graduates in this field. The school is designed to train engineers in theories and applications of artificial intelligence and data science. Its students will be taught to develop and publish practical and innovative solutions to problems in sectors like health, energy, agriculture and transportation, thus contributing to the country’s scientific and economic development.
Souad Hadli, a researcher and lecturer at ENSIA, said it was hoped the school would correct the shortage of scholars and specialists in data science, artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things, computer vision, automatic language processing, and speech processing.
“One of our school’s goals is to equip engineers with basic knowledge in mathematics and a deep theoretical understanding of technologies like artificial intelligence and entrepreneurship, as well as the practical skills that help them keep pace with the labour market inside and outside Algeria,” she told Al-Fanar Media.
The experts who run the school get help from Algerian scholars abroad, creating educational programmes that reflect the needs of the labour market. The school has adopted English as the language of instruction because it is the language of most of the internationally approved curricula in the field.
A House of Artificial Intelligence
Algeria also opened this year its first House of Artificial Intelligence, based at the University of Algiers 1 Benyoucef Benkhedda. The house will function as a hub bringing together leaders of small and medium-size enterprises as well as academics and researchers. The aim is to enable holders of degrees in artificial intelligence to put their projects into practice to benefit the national economy and motivate entrepreneurs with government promises of investment.
The House of Artificial Intelligence is not limited to the University of Algiers 1. Fares Mokhtari, the university’s president, explained that the project includes 13 universities across the country. The house also oversees 40 artificial intelligence research projects.
Mokhtari said these research projects “will be followed up and promoted by professors and researchers from inside and outside the country, with follow-up by the government, to ensure they contribute to the national economy.”
Mokhtari said branches of the House of Artificial Intelligence could be set up in a number of participating universities, providing more opportunities for training, education, and research projects encouraging communication between research students and their supervisors.
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