Welcome to the Riyadh exhibition and convention Center, where the inaugural Money 2020 Middle East is taking place.
Now of course this is the conference where money does business, and speaking of money, my next guest is from the Central Bank of Egypt, Doctor Amira Abdulaziz, welcome.
Thank you.
You are the senior advisor for data science and advanced analytics as well as a council member of the Global Women in AI.
Yes, that is the topic on everyone's mind, so we're gonna start there.
OK, how is the Central Bank of Egypt leveraging AI?
OK.
Well, the Central Bank of Egypt has since several years initiated a data science and advanced analytics hub, which is a centralized data science hub for working on projects using data science and AI.
To help different departments within the central bank and especially to use AI for monetary policy intelligence to be able to get more granular insights for policymaking, to have more targeted, precise monetary policy decisions, and we have been working on projects for the Years and it has been supporting uh to to the growth of the economy and the stability of the economy in Egypt.
Yeah, so that is so fascinating.
Now do you see a place where it's having the biggest impact?
Do you have like an example maybe with GDP forecasting?
Yes, yes, definitely GDP official statistics lag by one quarter or longer, and it.
It is always important for policymakers to understand what is going on in the economy in real time, get real time market dynamics, be able to see where to intervene at the right time, and we have been working on now casting projects as well as inflation trends monitoring and.
So sentiment analysis to see how the public feels about the economy and from there have an inflation expectations index also to make forecast inflation and give us a whole view of inflation trends and we also in Egypt, as many developing countries, we have an informal hidden economy that works in.
With the formal economy, and it's very difficult to quantify the economic activities there and so we have also worked on projects using mimic models to be able to understand and quantify the informal economy and its relationship with formal economic indicators.
So that is a big job, but I imagine a big impact once you are able to do that, yes, definitely.
For sure, it helps to have the decision makers see real time market dynamics and intervene at the right time with the necessary monetary policy interventions, see the warning signals, and be able to with granular insights.
A more granular, uh, view of the economy, the different sectors in the economy.
Now in order to do all this, you have to have the right kind of data.
So how are you approaching that?
Have you had to explore alternative sources of because alternative data sources, I mean now since the COVID times and afterwards there have been many changes and and um ups and downs in the economies globally.
And uh and from there started um the need of being able to have high frequency data to understand real time what is happening in the economy.
And uh when there is anything like a pandemic or uh you know a war or uh you know different um inflation trends, it's very important to make quick decisions about what is happening now in the economy and so of course alternative data sources used alone or along with official statistics proved to be very useful for this.
Now I want to go back to, you know, your, your, you have these dual roles, right?
Now with the being a council member and the global women in AI wanted to explore this a little bit further because we know AI has become ever more important in our lives and integrated but yet there is a bit of a gap, right?
Only 26% of the AI workforce are women.
Yes, so how do we address this?
There's a gap in that and uh the percentage of, uh, women in AI workforce as well as for women.
It is, um, it's always difficult because they're juggling between so many things in life and it it's very important, or we have a passion for that to be able to have like a support system, a safe environment for women.
To interact together, share experience, share expertise in the field, be able to grow, develop in their own careers, and even for women who are not working, it's very important to be updated with what's new in the world to be.
Updated to align with their kids, their friends in the community and understand what's happening because it's I mean this technology is moving so fast that if we if we if we don't try to catch up we fall behind and some people have the opportunities at their jobs to develop.
So for example, I consider myself lucky at the Central Bank of Egypt we have programs like.
Women's world banking leadership courses and we have courses specifically for women, you know, to grow, but for other women, I think this would be a great support system to learn from each other, to have mentorship, peer to peer mentorship, to choose a specific program fit for you in whichever profession the woman is working.
And it's actually also the case that we tend to think that older generations, there's a gap, they will not be able to catch up quickly on AI, but actually the thing is those people, they have background, so building up AI skills is easier and that's what the workforce needs.
So the real problem also, and a big gap is the students who just graduated because as they started the study programs.
Was not AI really fully integrated within their education, and now they've just graduated.
They still have no work experience or practical experience.
They're faced with all of this new technology at once and they need a push.
They need knowledge.
They need to have skills and in the previous, I mean in the last conference I was in AI for, you know, Professor Geoffrey Hinton, godfather of AI, I'm very fond of him.
And he mentioned that in the future, since we have all of these fears of the AI systems, we need to direct and guide the design of the AI systems to be mother AI.
And so why the system would then care about humans.
Yeah, would not hurt humans, yeah, the design and the design phase from the very beginning.
And so it makes you think if this is the case and we want to have mother AI systems, where are the women and where is the status of women globally within the field?
And so I encourage all women to educate themselves, build up their own skills, join international communities, digital platforms where there are expertise in the field that they can learn from.
Uh, participate in open source projects, find platforms to show their capabilities, and from here Global Women in AI would be a big supporter for that.
So there are to do all of that you can just join, yeah joinloom in AI, be a member and get all of this for free.
So the community and the collaboration is so important, yes, and we see so much of that here at this conference.
It's all about collaboration.
So I'm wondering, you know, now we'll put on your other hat, which is at the Central Bank of Egypt.
How do you see the Central Bank of Egypt and maybe other banks in the region collaborating, leveraging AI and data science to collaborate?
OK, I believe that collaboration between central banks is really very important in terms of sharing alternative data sources to be able to understand better the economy, and this is very important, especially between central banks that have similar economies as well.
And generally have a shared platform between the central banks for API connections for seamless data exchange, and also joint research, joint research together to try to find out what is new and learn more from each other and you know, all for the sake.
Of increasing the intelligence of economic insights, so you know what they say, if you want to go fast, you go alone.
If you want to go far you go together.
Yes, yes, it's very important for central banks to work together with financial institutions, with fintech, to be able to. grow and develop and increase awareness and increase economic intelligence and be able to understand and see how the economy is functioning now and see the real time dynamics of the markets.
Thank you so much, doctor.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
