What is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI: The African Edge?
When I wrote the first edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI in 2023, its subtitle was A Handbook For All. That was both a natural and obvious theme, given the utter newness of generative artificial intelligence at the time, and the seismic shock it delivered to the business, academic and consumer worlds.
Two years later, all these worlds have moved on, and a bigger picture has emerged. While many still need a guide to the basics of AI, the sequel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI: The African Edge, steps past the introductions and into the spaces where AI is already in use. It is a tour through African industries, professions, and communities that have moved from experimentation to integration. The structure is a sequence of encounters, each chapter centred on a person, a role, or a sector, showing what AI looks like when it meets need and ingenuity.
From manual to map
Each chapter also builds a section of a larger map. The “African Edge” of the title is both a slogan and a recurring condition. A mobile-first digital landscape, a young and connected population, and the need to work with constrained resources create a setting where AI is often tested in situations global suppliers do not anticipate. That can mean chatbots fluent in indigenous languages before they appear in global platforms, or agricultural models tuned to microclimates that have no equivalent in Europe or North America.
This edition’s chapters are populated with coaches, farmers, coders, artists, executives, and engineers whose use of AI is specific, and embedded in their work. It treats AI less as an abstract force and more as a component within systems already in motion.
My intention is that, by the end of the journey, the reader has a mapped view of AI across African sectors as present-tense application rather than future potential. The effect is cumulative: an account of how a global technology is being bent, refined, and scaled to local conditions, and how those conditions, in turn, are shaping the technology.
“The African edge” appears in solutions that run within available bandwidth, match financial realities, speak indigenous languages, and respond to environmental conditions. The result is a living atlas, charted with the help of guides whose work links the practical needs of the present to the possibilities of the future.
These examples emphasise the insight that AI is not only a matter of technology:
Sport as a case study in margins
The opening chapter, The Coach, goes behind the scenes of the Springboks’ 2019 and 2023 Rugby World Cup campaigns under Rassie Erasmus. The victories were narrow, but the preparation was wide in scope. Live GPS feeds tracked player movement and intensity. Predictive fatigue models flagged when a player’s output was likely to dip. Match analytics informed substitutions that shifted the balance in three one-point wins in 2023. An in-depth interview with Erasmus reveals how data added another lens, alongside physical conditioning and tactical drills, to make decisions under pressure.
From beehives to data
The Beekeeper leads into fields alive with both nature and data. In Reading, England, I was first exposed to hives that carry embedded sensors that feed temperature, humidity, and bee-activity data into analysis platforms. In Africa, similar systems connect small-scale and commercial beekeepers to environmental data, improving pollination outcomes and crop yields. In Kenya and South Africa, early-warning alerts allow intervention before disease spreads, safeguarding both bees and the farmers who rely on them.
This thread carries into The Farmer, where climate-linked planting algorithms match crop choices and sowing schedules to shifting rainfall patterns. Image-recognition tools detect pests before they spread. The focus is on tools adapted to African soils, weather cycles, and infrastructure realities.
Creative industries in transition
The Artist moves from theatre stages in Cape Town to galleries and fashion studios in East and West Africa. Performances layer human voice with machine-generated harmonies, while dancers trigger AI-driven rhythms through movement. In African creative spaces, illustrators use AI for rapid colour studies before committing brush to canvas, and designers generate textile patterns that match local tastes. The tools act as collaborators, extending the range of ideas artists can explore in a single session.
The Voicekeeper captures the sound of Africa through language models and speech-recognition systems trained on local data. In South Africa, Lelapa AI pioneers small language models. Projects in Kenya integrate Kiswahili into AI-driven translation and transcription services, enabling a new wave of digital products that speak directly to their users in familiar languages.
Why does it matter?
Anyone who has read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (the inspiration for the title of this book) knows that the answer to “the question of life, the universe and everything” is the number 42. They just don’t know what the question is. The subtext of his series, for those scared of the question, is: ”Don’t panic.” Following the release of the first edition of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI, I was asked to give numerous talks on the topic at corporate conferences and schools, on radio and TV, and even to retired people. The word that kept coming up in audience and interview questions was “scary”. I realised that “Don’t panic” was the perfect underlying message for any guide to AI.
And by casting the narrative as a travel guide, and telling it through the roles of those using AI, it is made clear that AI is already part of our everyday lives, if we only look up and recognise it.
Where to buy The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI: The African Edge?
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI: The African Edge is published by Pan Macmillan and is available in all South African bookstores at a retail price ranging from R330 to R360.
*Arthur Goldstuck is CEO of World Wide Worx, editor-in-chief of Gadget.co.za, and author of the new book, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to AI – The African Edge”.