The world of entertainment is changing rapidly. Increased access to fibre to the home, as well as a growing number of content creators and video-on-demand services are forcing large entertainment companies to rethink their business strategies and innovate new and exciting ways to delight their customers.

The MultiChoice Group and its companies have long provided subscribers across Africa with quality content, but in this new highly competitive and dynamic environment, it is imperative that it adapts its content and the way it delivers the content if it wants to remain one of Africa’s most successful entertainment businesses.

As part of its digital transformation journey, the MultiChoice Group partnered with Microsoft South Africa across various solutions including Azure, Microsoft 365, D365 and security services. Key to the relationship is the fact that both organisations share a future view of responsible innovation, as well as technologies and solutions that empower end users.

The partnership is enabling MultiChoice to deal with the challenges of its ever-changing industry by driving efficiencies in the business through collaboration, and to explore innovative ways of delivering content to its subscribers thanks to artificial intelligence and big data analytics.

MultiChoice is streamlining its business, becoming more agile and innovative.

As a crucial partner in MultiChoice’s digital transformation journey, Microsoft provides the platform and toolsets that allow it to take its new agile offerings to market quicker, cheaper and better.

Azure as a platform for innovation:

MultiChoice’s digital transformation journey with Microsoft started four years ago when the company began exploring the use of Azure as a platform. Initial explorations began with light loads within the business’s IT division, looking at the migration of tape libraries into the cloud. Since then, the relationship has grown exponentially, and MultiChoice is now running test and production workloads across the business. Optimising operations where possible and using Azure as an innovation platform.

In 2018 during the FIFA World Cup in Russia, MultiChoice demonstrated the power of cloud technology when it was able to stream the semi-final and final of the tournament to subscribers in 4k on the Azure platform, demonstrating just how quick and easy it is to spin up these types of services in the cloud and to deliver them to MultiChoice’s customer base.

“MultiChoice has chosen Azure as a key platform on their journey to the cloud,” says Alkis Flemetakis, Account Director – Enterprise Commercial at Microsoft Corporation. “They are continuously assessing the environment and over the last four years, have created prototypes and MVPs (Minimum Viable Products) on the Microsoft cloud platform. Currently, MultiChoice are looking at migrating significant IT workloads to Azure and using AI and machine learning to develop innovative solutions for their customers.”

One such project, which is currently in proof of concept, is the dubbing and subtitling of content for different markets.

Says Brad Eliot: Group Chief Information Officer at MultiChoice: “We produce a lot of our own local content and there’s a drive to see if we can use speech recognition to dub and subtitle that content. With the volume of media assets, we have literally thousands and thousands of hours of content, so doing this in a non-automated fashion would just be impossible and inefficient”.

A second key development, which will be launched next year, is automated highlights packages for sport.

Using Azure, MultiChoice will be able to produce highlights packages in near real-time for use not only in live broadcasts but also on social media platforms, meaning MultiChoice can still deliver live, easy-to-consume content to customers who are on-the-go but still want access to their favourite sporting content.

Another added value service being explored is that of automated content moderation. Using machine learning, MultiChoice is exploring ways to automate the moderation of profanity, nudity and violence – linking to Microsoft’s approach to responsible AI and providing customers with the peace of mind that their children will not have access to inappropriate content in the future.

MultiChoice is additionally looking to harness the power of AI and co-create innovation that is locally relevant. Through its partnership with Microsoft, MultiChoice is looking to leverage AI, Mixed Reality and Cognitive Services technologies that are radically changing the audience experience compared to traditional static linear TV.

There is also the potential to use AI to improve accessibility for MultiChoice customers. Microsoft’s Seeing AI app, for instance, narrates the world around a person, describing people, texts and objects, while Microsoft Translator provides real-time captions for the deaf or hard of hearing.

Other players in the Media and Entertainment industry are already enjoying success by leveraging these technologies: SkySports is using Mixed Reality for audiences to interact with well-known golfers, obtain vital stats on their games, as well as accessories, and US Football live event producers are using Mixed Reality to bring the real-life experience of the stadium to the home or sports pub. Families, friends can also engage in the experience using immersive technology.

This shows that there are significant opportunities for MultiChoice within AI, Mixed Reality and Cognitive Services.

MultiChoice also recognises that there are opportunities available by leveraging the power of Microsoft’s partnerships with leading media partner solutions which run on Azure, contributing to the modernisation of the broadcast value chain with a smooth transition in operations and minimal upskilling of staff as well as improving time to market.

Leveraging the insights from data

The ability to capture data, analyse it and then do more with it is top of mind for MultiChoice. The cloud allows for MultiChoice to store enormous amounts of data and overlay data analytics in order to develop valuable insights on how to better serve its customers.

This insight then allows MultiChoice to shift from being a blanket content provider to being able to personalise the delivery of its services to its subscribers based on better knowledge of local audiences, ultimately placing it on an even footing with content providers who offer similar services.

MultiChoice can also analyse data on its devices enabling it to predict when a device might run out of space and even monitor the device’s health, ultimately reducing costs when it comes to customer support.

“We are moving towards a data and analytics driven organisation,” says Eliot. “Our data warehouses have content that facilitates understanding of our subscriber preferences. We are modernising our data warehouses and Microsoft is helping us with their existing technologies. At the same time, we are looking to see how we can modernise our data structures by looking at Azure data services. We are currently looking at proof of concepts for technologies such as sim apps and hyperscale.”

Trust as a key factor in opening up new opportunities

Eliot believes that working with Microsoft has opened up opportunities that MultiChoice would never have been able to pursue without the access to cloud computing.

“The volume of data that we have and hundreds of petabytes of media assets – to do subtitling or to do content discovery across those volumes would be impossible and inefficient with on-premises compute. You have to have the scale of the cloud, and that’s where these new kinds of opportunities are being opened up and are becoming quite real for the first time. The machine learning that we can do and the artificial intelligence that we’re working on really wouldn’t be possible without access to big cloud compute.”

Overall, trust has been the key factor that drove MultiChoice to partner with Microsoft on its digital transformation journey. “Microsoft is in the business of collaborating with and helping organisations digitally transform, with their technologies and tools enabling their customers’ success in a seamless way,” he says.

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An initiative that will use digital technologies such as artificial intelligence has been launched to empower community health workers, promising to help save the lives of at least six million children and women in ten countries by 2030.
 
The Rockefeller Foundation initiative will be piloted in Uganda and India for its first phase that runs from this year to 2022. It will be expanded to eight other countries by 2030 in regions with a high need or high incidence of maternal mortality and which can sustain the use of digital tools such as mobile phones and the internet.
 
*Following the Ugandan pilot in Africa, the initiative  launched last month (25 September) will potentially expand across countries in East and Southern Africa.
 
The Precision Public Health project, backed by US$100 million funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and partners, to prevent and treat diseases aims to use data for creating effective interventions to address the health needs of populations, especially mothers.

For instance, linking pregnant women to health workers and bringing health facilities closer to where people reside to increase the number of people delivering in hospitals or assisted by a doctor or nurse.
 
Manisha Bhinge, associate director of the Rockefeller Foundation’s Health Initiative, says: “Our biggest aim is to end mortality due to preventable diseases such as *malaria, diarrhea, pneumonia in young children, infections disease outbreaks and ensure access to critical primary healthcare services. We know that community-based interventions are critical.”
 
Bhinge tells SciDev.Net that empowering communities to easily access services is vital to ensuring accessible, affordable and high quality healthcare.
 
“We want to ensure that community workers bring the right information to the right people at the right time,” explains Bhinge.
 
Interventions such as early detection of possible disease outbreaks, she adds, will ensure that key health crises such as cholera outbreaks are mitigated before they outstrip available resources as was the case with the Ebola virus in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
 
The Rockefeller Foundation will partner with organizations such as the WHO, UNICEF, and governments to deliver the project. It comes as a WHO report published last month shows that in 2017 about 295,000 women died from pregnancy and childbirth, with 94 per cent of the deaths occurring in low-resource regions.
 
According to the Rockefeller Foundation, developing countries are largely missing out in data science and this could widen inequalities in health outcomes relative to developed nations.
 
But under the initiative, data analytics will be used to predict problems such as where there are sanitation issues that could lead to cholera and diarrhea.
 
“We shall therefore navigate, and get tools in place to respond in time,” Bhinge says.
 
Jane Aceng, Uganda’s minister of health, tells SciDev.Net that leveraging data at community levels will help improve healthcare delivery in the country.

“Data can help us see who is in greatest need and hold ourselves accountable for meeting those needs,” explains Aceng. “We are looking forward to working with global partners, engaging technology companies, and translating innovations into lives saved and improved.”

Freddie Ssengooba, an associate professor of health economics and health systems management at the Makerere University in Uganda, cautions partners implementing the initiative to focus more on people rather than health systems.

“Health systems are important but can make an impact [only] if it brings health interventions to the people,” Ssengooba says, adding that data must be sent “back to the society where action is needed to offer working solutions to health challenges facing people”

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Africa’s nascent artificial intelligence sector just got its biggest boost from Google which is opening its first Africa AI research center in Accra, Ghana’s capital.

Though Accra has a vibrant tech industry, it would not have been the obvious location for many Africa tech watchers when compared with Nairobi or nearby Lagos where Google has already announced it would open its first Launchpad Space outside the US. Last month, Facebook also opened its first startup hub in Africa there.

Google had been laying the pipeline, both figuratively and physically, for future developments in Accra for a few years now. Back in 2015, the Mountain View, California tech giant started work on a fiber optic network, called Project Link, across the city to improve internet speeds.

Ghana also has good a font of young talent from its public universities and newer centers like the computer science program at the highly-regarded private institution, Ashesi University.

Even then, deciding on the location was a difficult decision, said Jeff Dean, team lead for Google Brain, under which its AI projects are housed. “In the end, we chose Accra because of a strong ecosystem of local universities and its proximity to a branch of the African Institute of Mathematical Sciences, and our experience in the country,” said Dean on Twitter in response to Quartz’s questions. “It is our hope that over time we can consider other research locations as well.”

The company says it’s trying to bring together top machine learning researchers and engineers at the new center dedicated to AI research and its applications. Google is making a big bet on AI for its future. In 2016 alone it invested $30 billion on AI and machine learning research.

AI is already having a major footprints across Africa. In Ethiopia, where Sophia (the robot that was granted Saudi citizenship in 2017), was partly developed, futurists and enthusiasts are betting on AI’s massive potential to drive development in place of the government’s own bet on manufacturing. Instead of large industrial parks for Chinese factories, they want increased investment for research and development into new age technologies like AI. “They think that advanced technologies are a luxury. It’s not a luxury, it is crucial,” says Getnet Assefa, founder of iCog, Ethiopia’s first AI lab.

In Nigeria, machine learning is being used by doctors for the early detection of birth asphyxia—the third highest cause of under-5 mortality in Africa. China, on its way to become the leader in artificial intelligence, is using Zimbabwe as the test ground to help its facial recognition systems identify faces with dark skin.

Despite these and many other projects, artificial intelligence is not necessarily a straightforward topic for governments across the continent. AI is already taking away some factory jobs even before there were enough to go round in what is being termed as ‘premature deindustrialisation’.

With high levels of unemployment in many countries, particularly with young Africans there are concerns with some African policy makers that these types of technological advances, which will see machines and robots learn to “think” like humans will only worsen unemployment. Yet such consideration might be seen as short-term thinking. Research from PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated “artificial intelligence technologies could increase global GDP by $15.7 trillion, a full 14%, by 2030 of which $1.2 trillion would be added for Africa.

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