Gqom: The Babusi Nyoni Story

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This special piece of podcast storytelling offers a compelling glimpse into the heart and mind of one of Africa's most gifted multi-hyphenate technological innovators, Babusi Nyoni.

Babusi is a Zimbabwean creative technologist, social entrepreneur and gqom producer with an extraordinary personal story. He is a self-taught tech pro whose project credits include creating what Forbes magazine described as “the world’s first AI football commentator” for the UEFA Champions League final (on behalf of Heineken) in 2016. In the same year, he built a prototype for predicting human displacement in Africa using AI. The latter initiative led to him launching an AI project pilot for the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR).

In 2019, Babusi built a prototype app for Parkinson’s disease early diagnosis using computer vision and presented his findings at the Skoll World Forum at  Oxford University. In 2020, he co-founded Sila Health, a healthtech startup that provides last-mile health care access across Africa using chat platforms and creates comprehensive datasets to advance healthcare in the region.

This is the Babusi Nyoni story.

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Useful References:

GQOM EP: GQOM TODAY by STATE OFFF (Tripleblack)
ARTICLE: The dance app that helps assess Parkinson’s by Neil Munshi (Financial Times)
JOURNAL: Artificial Intelligence in Global Health by Sara E. Davies (Cambridge University Press)
ARTICLE: Tracking goats and bleach, artificial intelligence helps out in crises by Laurie Goering (Reuters)
VIDEO: Predicting Africa's Next Refugee Crisis Using AI by Babusi Nyoni (TEDxCapeTown)
ARTICLE: The Incredible Ways Heineken Uses Big Data, The Internet of Things And Artificial Intelligence (AI) Bernard Marr (Forbes)
PODCAST: Babusi Nyoni Of M&C SAATCHI Abel on the rise of AI-deployment by African Tech Roundup

SPECIAL THANKS: This podcast was written, produced and narrated by Andile Masuku, with invaluable editing and soundscaping assistance provided by Spike Ballantine and Rasmus Bitsch.

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