Towards the Fourth Industrial Revolution in Namibia: An Undergraduate AI Course Africanized

Abstract

In this Full Paper, we report our experiences of teaching AI in a Namibian university in collaboration with a Finnish university and a few companies. Within the Computing Education Community, only a minority of research reports have experience teaching Artificial Intelligence (AI), and very little research has been conducted on teaching and learning AI in Africa. Given the high importance and impact of AI, this is alarming. Learning and teaching AI in an African higher education setting provides unique challenges compared to the standardized approach in the Global North. Our undergraduate course in AI was carried out in a novel way that emphasized the creative application of AI to meet the requirements of the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR). We chose an approach that helps Computer science graduates to explore and get inspired by the opportunities of AI at the ground.