Why Vodacom is taking its AI talent search back to university

The battle for artificial intelligence (AI) talent has reached South Africa’s universities. Facing a shortage of engineers and researchers, Vodacom Group, an African telecoms operator, the University of Johannesburg (UJ), and Amazon Web Services (AWS), the global cloud provider, launched the Vodacom AI Lab to train postgraduate students by placing them on practical AI projects drawn from the telecommunications industry. The initiative reflects a growing recognition that Africa’s AI challenge is