She is a lover of African history and literature. But her interests keep changing after the discovery of every new piece of information. That has helped her understand the continent’s diverse culture but Natasha Ochiel’s insatiable quest for knowledge has led her to comprehend why and how Artificial Intelligence (AI) complements blockchain.

She is young and ambitious, and currently the co-founder and head of business at Nairobi-based AI Centre of Excellence (AiCE), which employs about 150 people. It is one of the fastest growing AI startups in Kenya. The bulk of the team is made up of youngsters with five product managers aged under 26.

Inquisitive Mind Is Critical In Tech

Growing up, Ochiel was highly inquisitive and always wanted to lead from the front. “I liked the outdoors, fixing broken cars and machines, pretty much all the hands-on activities,” she tells Nodo News in an interview in January. “I hardly liked most of the stuff that girls would ideally be expected to be into.”

Ochiel has six years’ experience in customer service, events and managing data centers. However, her biggest passion at the moment is bridging the knowledge gap in Africa’s tech markets. She does this through AiCE.

At Moi University, a college located some 300 kilometers from Nairobi, her favorite subjects were music and physics. This is because they were both creative and logical.

She studied hospitality for her undergraduate studies, which is a totally different discipline from what she is doing now – technology.

While doing her first research projects in college, she discovered her interest in AI and data. She used to collect information from users and analyze it to give insights and illustrate trends.

Ochiel’s knowledge of data science, she says, has largely been self taught and through interacting with experts in the industry.

In her family, she is the second-born of eight children. She also loves interacting with different people and learning their different cultures, mindsets and engaging in “meaningful conversations.”

Ochiel’s biggest motivation in the blockchain industry is to bring a positive change by intertwining it with AI. She says she’d love to see Africa’s AI innovators building more solutions to advance the continent.

“What motivates me is the desire to empower Africans to take charge…and be willing to put in the work and discover new things,” she says.

Hurdles Faced by Women In Tech

As a woman in tech, she confesses to have faced numerous challenges in her entrepreneurial journey. Many people, for instance, tend to feel that she doesn’t know as much as her male counterparts in AI. It has also been a challenge teaching herself the dynamics of AI. However, these gridlocks have always given her more reasons to want to do more in technology.

Women in tech, Ochiel says, mostly have to work hard to prove themselves in the technology industry. For men, their words speak for them.

She overcomes these challenges and others by not paying much attention to them. “I don’t focus on them because I know what I’m doing,” the 29-year-old says. “I strive to mostly work with those willing to support me.”

Ochiel Wants to Shake Things

Five years from now, she says, she’d perhaps want to build something big in tech. “Something that sells itself to the people, and one that meets and addresses their needs and also makes money.”

Africa, according to her, has many opportunities, talents, resources, and skills that innovators can build upon to feed the world. She wants Africans to stop asking for assistance.

One of her focus industries at the moment is agriculture, where she is trying to understand the link between climate and farming and how this affects output and yield, and how to increase this output using AI.

“As much as agriculture didn’t have many problems 20 or 30 years ago, it currently faces many challenges. Yields are becoming a problem now,” she says.

Fintech is also an industry that interests her as many large corporations keep investing in it. However, she admits, it is difficult to pick one particular industry that would wholly take her attention when it comes to tech, because in the numerous industries that exist, there are gaps to be addressed. And AI “can all be creatively and effectively used to address these gaps.”

AiCE is working on different AI projects at the moment. One is Blue, a care bot that focuses on cancer awareness. It analyzes personalized information and gives feedback based on the data you feed it.

AI’s Potential in Africa is Huge

For the projects, AiCE uses machine learning models to give unique feedback based on the unique data-sets encoded into them. Ochiel leads the team that aims to have trained 1,000 AI engineers by the end of the year, as the number of AI startups keep growing across the continent.

According to the 2022 State of AI in Africa report published by AI Media Group, over 2,400 companies in the continent are listing AI as a specialty, of which 40% were founded in the last five years.

Researchers are optimistic that AI could expand Africa’s economy by $1.5 trillion by 2030, which translates to 50% of its current GDP. That is, if it could capture only 10% of the fast-growing global AI market.

Countries with the most AI startups in the continent are South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Kenya, and Morocco, which have 726, 456, 246, 204, and 126 startups respectively.

While AI could be in its nascent years in Africa, it is growing at a fast pace, with over 30 AI communities in the African region providing a range of services and support to new learners, entrepreneurs, and job seekers.