Rural Kenyans power West’s AI revolution. Now they want more

Labelling data for international AI companies has become a hustle for young Kenyans. Now, they dream of designing too.

Naivasha, Kenya – Caroline Njau comes from a family of farmers who tend to fields of maize, wheat, and potatoes in the hilly terrain near Nyahururu, 180 kilometres (112 miles) north of the capital Nairobi.

But Njau has chosen a different path in life.

These days, the 30-year-old lives in Naivasha, a scenic town at the centre of Kenya’s flower industry and midway between Nyahururu and Nairobi. Seated in her living room with a cup of milk tea, she labels data for artificial intelligence (AI) companies abroad on an app. The sun rises over the unpaved streets of her neighbourhood as she flicks through images of tarmac roads, intersections and sidewalks on her smartphone while carefully drawing boxes around various objects; traffic lights, cars, pedestrians, and signposts. The designer of the app – an American subcontractor to Silicon Valley companies – pays her $3 an hour.

Njau is a so-called annotator, and her annotation of data compiles the building blocks that train artificial intelligence to recognise patterns in real life, in this case, with self-driving cars.

“My parents have not fully embraced technology because they find it hard to learn. But I always loved science. Data annotation creates opportunities, and you do not need a degree to do this – just your phone and an internet connection,” says Njau who studied teaching but has been annotating since 2021.