My Vision for AI in Ghana - Leadership and Influence Chevening

My vision is for Ghana to build a thriving AI economy that tackles its unique challenges and keeps pace with global advancements, unlike in the past industrial revolutions. Although AI has the potential to significantly enhance the lives of Ghanaians, proliferation is hampered by issues such as a shortage of qualified workers, data scarcity, and poor digital infrastructure. Among other things, I believe that passionate, proactive leadership is key to overcoming these obstacles, and I am committed to being one of those leaders driving Ghana's AI transformation.

I was not born a leader but became one through the problems I identified and the steps I took to contribute to solving them. As I mentioned earlier, one main problem of AI adoption in Ghana is the lack of skilled personnel. My experience in capacity-building, especially as a mentor, has allowed me to address this gap directly by empowering others with the skills and confidence to pursue AI and technology. As a mentor at SheCodes Club at my university, I noticed that many female students felt apprehensive about programming and robotics. My goal was to not only teach them technical skills but also to inspire confidence and provide tailored support to help them engage fully with these fields. Through weekly classes, I guided them in programming and robotics, gradually transforming their initial hesitations into enthusiasm. When they faced challenges, I shared my own experiences of failure and perseverance, encouraging them to see setbacks as opportunities for growth. I also adapted my teaching style to fit individual learning needs, ensuring each student received the support they needed. By the end, many students confidently applied their new skills to final-year projects, demonstrating the lasting impact a good leader has on creating skilled individuals.

Furthermore, most existing AI solutions. do not meet the continent's specific needs. Keeping this in mind, I joined a team during the Africa Computer Vision Summer School Hackathon focused on developing an assistive device. For me, leadership involves fostering an environment rich in discussion where every contribution matters while guiding these conversations toward a common goal. To promote open collaboration, I organized brainstorming sessions and actively encouraged all team members, who were often hesitant, to share their ideas. I used my experience in creating assistive devices and my observations of the AI landscape to guide the discussions toward a solution that resonated with the African visually impaired community. This approach steered our discussions toward a Question and Answering System capable of effectively communicating in Swahili, Amharic, and English. Ultimately, our collaborative efforts culminated in winning the competition and securing a mentor to help bring our solution to life.

In conclusion, my leadership journey has fueled my commitment to encouraging the widespread building of AI solutions in Africa. hrough the Chevening program, I will refine my skills to drive sustainable growth and inspire others, ensuring Ghana emerges as a leader in the global AI landscape.

Note: I would appreciate any help to make is essay better. Additionally, I want to maintain this problems of AI theme throughout my essays, is that alright also?

You can only use AI as the theme of the UK Study essay. When it comes to university choices, you may use your educational background in relation to AI as a part of your university choice considerations. You must respond directly to the prompt requirements, without inserting AI at any given point for all the other response topics. You cannot use this leadership and influencing essay because it does not prove that you have a professional ability to lead and influence your peers. College leadership is one thing, but the competitors you will be up against are internally skilled professionals who have proven to be leaders and influencers in their professional communities. They are the people that would prove to be future leaders within their fields because they are already practicing those skills in an intricate and complicated professional setting. That is what will end up disqualifying your application in this case. This essay is not competitive at all and misdirected in response presentation.

@Holt
Thank you for reading and providing feedback. I just have a few questions. I don't understand what you mean by a professional ability to lead? I have been a research assistant at an AI lab for 2 years and I am not currently an undergraduate student. What would a professional ability to lead mean for me?

Merged:

Leadership and Influence Essay for Chevening - The greatest leader doesn't only do great things

Prompt - Chevening is looking for individuals who will be future leaders or influencers in their home countries. Explain how you meet this requirement, using clear examples of your own leadership and influencing skills to support your answer.

As Ronald Reagan said, "The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things." This sentiment perfectly describes my approach to leadership across various situations, as my focus has been on empowering others to excel.
One of my key leadership roles was as a mentor at SheCodes Club at my university. In this role, I noticed that many of our students felt apprehensive about programming. This was very apparent during class discussions and from the feedback that we had from previous cohorts. This anxiety towards programming led to low retention at the end of the class. To curb this, my goal was to not only teach them technical skills but also to inspire confidence that would endure even when they approached tough topics. Through weekly classes, in collaboration with other mentors, I taught them various concepts in Python programming. When they faced challenges, I shared my own experiences of failure and perseverance, encouraging them to see setbacks as opportunities for growth. I also worked with other mentors to adapt our teaching style to fit individual learning needs by providing more concrete examples of the concepts that they learned in class and how they could be applied to their various fields of study. By the end of 16 weeks of class, we retained a majority of students from the start of the class. Additionally, many students were happy about their skills and now felt confident in their programming skills and were able to use these skills to lead their final year projects.
Another instance where I demonstrated strong leadership skills in my professional life occurred during a project focused on plant disease detection for local farmers. We were tasked with collecting a dataset of images for various crop diseases local to the area. However, in discussions with extension officers, I realized that our data collection method could misidentify pest damage as crop disease because of their similar symptoms. At that time, we were focused only on crop diseases and hadn't considered the similar appearance of pest damage. Restarting data collection would have been detrimental since we were far along in data annotation. To address this, I encouraged my team to work with the extension officers to document our findings and add an "unknown" class for ambiguous cases. Some team members were skeptical about the importance of this adjustment. I clearly communicated the problem and emphasized that the management of crop diseases and pest issues is vastly different, making accurate predictions critical. This explanation made it important to them. As a result, we successfully worked to annotate the data, accounting for ambiguous classes. This dataset is now being used effectively, with minimal complaints.
Looking ahead, I hope to refine my leadership skills to solve problems in Ghana as well as to inspire the younger generation. I believe that the Chevening program is a stepping stone for this goal, and using it, I intend to reach for the stars.