A 26-year-old Ivorian tech entrepreneur won the UK’s Royal Academy of Engineering’s prestigious 2020 Africa Prize for Engineering Innovation. Charlette N’Guessan and her team developed a facial recognition software designed to identify black Africans.
Charlette N’Guessan – the CEO of her own company, BACE group, based in Ghana – is the first ever woman to win the Africa Prize.
All Africa reported that the 26-year-old N’Guessan and her “Pan African team” developed BACE API, a software that uses facial recognition and artificial intelligence to verify identities remotely and in real time.
The software has been developed specifically to identify Africans. Most of the existing facial recognition technology available struggle to recognise black faces. A United States government study revealed that the current systems misidentify black people at a rate of five to ten times higher than for white people.
The only Ghanaian finalist, Charlotte N’Guessan invented a system, BACE API. It uses live facial recognition technology to verify identities and prevent financial and online identity fraud.
