Darlington Akogo is a global leader in Artificial Intelligence. He's the Founder and Chief
Executive Officer at minoHealth AI Labs; an AI Healthtech company; karaAgro AI; an
AI-powered Plant & Pest Disease Detection and Precision Agriculture platform, Runmila AI
Institute; an AI and Data Science training institute, and Gudra AI Studio; an organization
broadly exploring AI and Exponential Technologies applied various domains including
Transportation, Sanitation and Energy.
Akogo has been named one of the Global Top 100 Most Influential People of African Descent
(MIPAD) in Healthcare. He's the Chair (Topic Driver) of the Topic Group on AI for Radiology
under the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and World Health
Organization (WHO) Focus Group on 'Artificial Intelligence for Health' (FG-AI4H). At UN
FG-AI4H, Akogo leads the development of global regulations and standards for AI in radiology.
He also works with African Union, where he serves as the Chair for the working group on
Artificial Intelligence Economy, working towards the development of a Continental African
Union (AU) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Continental Strategy that includes legislative, regulatory,
ethical, policy, and infrastructural frameworks in consultation with stakeholders such as AU
Member States’ governments, private sector, academia, innovators, and consumers.
He serves as a Global Innovation Adviser (GIA) to the International Development Innovation
Alliance (IDIA), where he provides advice on how to ensure international development agencies
are implementing responsible and localized Emerging Technology across the various countries
they are in. IDIA is an alliance between the top 15 international development agencies with the
shared goal of “actively promoting and advancing innovation as a means to help achieve
sustainable development”. Its members include the Rockefeller Foundation, Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation, Global Affairs Canada, Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GIZ), Global Innovation Fund, Grand
Challenges Canada, Skoll Foundation, Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency
(Sida), UNICEF, and USAID.
He’s a Research Co-Investigator, Data Management Lead, and Chair of Data group for the
project “NIHR Global Health Research Group on Digital Diagnostics for African Health
Systems”, led by Imperial College London in partnership with minoHealth AI Labs and other
organizations, with prior funding from UKRI. He served as the co-chair of the Digital Health &
AI Global Health Strategy Group, created by University of Oxford and 13 partners from around
the world including minoHealth AI Labs, Robert Koch Institute, Charité - Universitätsmedizin
Berlin, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Oxford University Clinical Research
Unit - OUCRU Vietnam, Financial Times, Technische Universität Berlin, Clinical Information
Network - KEMRI / Wellcome Trust Programme, Aga Khan Development Network.
He is the Team Leader (Director) for GIZ AI4Cashew project. KaraAgro AI won the contract to
implement the activity “Leveraging Machine Learning For the Ghanaian Cashew Sector Based
on Drone and Satellite Imagery Data'' for FAIR Forward. On behalf of the German Federal
Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), the Deutsche Gesellschaft für
Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) implements the project “FAIR Forward – Artificial
Intelligence for All”. He also serves as the Principal Investigator and Director for the Lacuna
Fund project, Drone-Based Agricultural Dataset for Crop Yield Estimation, by KaraAgro AI in
collaboration with Makerere AI Lab (Makerere University). He serves as the Director for another
Lacuna Fund project in health under the title, Datasets for AI-Based Diagnosis of Malaria, which
is a collaboration between Makerere AI Lab (Makerere University) and MinoHealth AI Lab. He
serves as the AI Lead (Consultant) for the Responsible Artificial Intelligence Lab (RAIL) under
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), funded by the International
Development Research Centre (IDRC) and GIZ. He served as the Lead (Ghana) for the Lacuna
Fund project, Crop Disease & Pest Image Data, by Makerere University and KaraAgro AI, the
Nelson-Mandela African Institution of Science and Technology, and Namibia University of
Science and Technology, where he leads a team of 40 people across industry, academia and
government towards the creation of large robust datasets for computer vision solutions towards
early disease and pest detection. In addition to this work, Akogo served as a member of the MIT
Tech Review Global Panel.
Akogo also taught as a Lecturer (Adjunct Faculty) of Artificial Intelligence at Academic City
College, where he created a new Deep Learning AI curriculum for the university and served as
the Bioinformatics (AI & Data Analytics) Resource Person at West African Centre for Cell
Biology and Infectious Pathogens (WACCBIP). Akogo is an Advisory Board Member and
Ambassador to West Africa at AI Expo Africa, the largest business focused AI community in
Africa. He is a member of the MIT Tech Review Global Panel. And he's a Global Shaper under
the World Economic Forum. He has served as an AI and Industry 4.0 expert and resource
person to African Union (AU), various United Nations (UN) agencies, and African, Caribbean
and Pacific Group of States (ACP) in the development of multilateral AI and Industry 4.0
strategies, policies and regulations.
He has spoken at numerous international conferences including NeurIPS, MIT’s Global
Community BioSummit, African Union Africa Industrialization Week, EU: Africa The Post Crisis
Journey, DASH with Harvard Global Health Initiative, MIT Critical Data and Novartis, NVIDIA
GTC, World AI Cannes Festival, several United Nations meetings and workshops, Rightscon and
the ACP Heads of States and Government Summit, amongst others. He has been a guest speaker
at Yale University, Washington State University, Technical University of Munich, University of
Lagos, University of Ghana, among others. His work was featured in the scientific book,
‘ Advances in Information and Communication ’. Alongside great minds including Yoshua
Bengio, who's celebrated as one of the Fathers of Deep Learning, Darlington is featured in and
wrote for the book, " Artificial Intelligence Simplified : 99 Use Cases And Expert Thoughts For
Starters". He has written op-eds for Financial Times and other media outlets.