Cissé, Moustapha
c. 1985-present · Contribution: 2014-present
AI Researcher & Founder
Founded and led Google's first AI research center in Africa, in Accra, Ghana, from 2018 to 2022, then founded Kera Health, an AI-powered healthcare platform based in Senegal
Portraits are AI-generated interpretations, not photographs.
Quick facts
- Born
- c. 1985
- Active since
- 2014
- Category
- AI & Social Media
- Best known for
- Google's Africa AI centerAMMI programKera Health
Impact on the world
Cissé built durable institutions for African AI research, ensuring the continent's languages, health needs, and agriculture are represented in a field that had largely overlooked them. He trained cohorts of researchers who now lead African AI startups.
An alternative history
What Would the World Look Like Without It?
One contribution. Many possible consequences. No single-person origin story.
Imagine this selected contribution absent, not the person or the entire field. The areas below are reflection prompts related to this discipline, not verified chains of direct dependency.
Sources
- Source lookupFind
iAfrica.com
Exact source links open the cited record. Source lookups help locate legacy references whose original records did not include a direct URL.
4 more sources and references are available to members.
Related visionaries
Aboyeji, Iyinoluwa
1991-present
Co-founded Andela (2014) and Flutterwave (2016), two of the small number of African tech companies to reach “unicorn” billion-dollar valuations, then founded Future Africa, a venture platform that has backed more than 100 African startups
Mohamed, Shakir
c. 1983-present
Co-founded the Deep Learning Indaba in 2017, a grassroots organization that has grown into the largest pan-African AI research and community-building movement, while working as a senior AI research director at Google DeepMind
Evans, Aicha
1969-present
CEO of Zoox, Amazon's self-driving car subsidiary, whom she led through a $1.3 billion acquisition by Amazon in 2020 and to the September 2025 launch of its first public robotaxi service in Las Vegas
Mawakana, Tekedra
1971-present
Co-CEO of Waymo, Alphabet's autonomous-driving technology company, since April 2021, overseeing business strategy and commercial rollout; among the few Black women leading a major U.S. technology company