When most of us hear the words “artificial intelligence”, we picture ChatGPT writing emails or robots walking across a stage somewhere in Silicon Valley. It still feels distant, futuristic and perhaps a little disconnected from everyday life in Zambia. Yet this week, while many of us were focused on election campaigns and the issues dominating our newsfeeds, another conversation was taking place in Geneva that may shape our future just as profoundly. At the United Nations’ AI for Good Global Summit, governments, researchers, businesses and young innovators gathered to explore how artificial intelligence and robotics could solve some of the world’s biggest challenges. Among them were young Zambians, supported through E-MARK’s Road to Geneva programme, representing a country that increasingly wants to be part of building the future rather than simply watching it unfold.

That matters far more than another photograph of a humanoid robot.

It signals that the future is no longer something happening somewhere else. It is something Zambia is beginning to participate in.

Much of the conversation around artificial intelligence focuses on whether machines will replace people. That is probably the wrong question. A more interesting one is whether technology will change where expertise lives. For countries like Zambia, where specialist healthcare professionals remain limited and many communities are separated from services by both distance and cost, that distinction could be transformative.

Imagine a future where a specialist surgeon in India performs a complex procedure on a patient in Lusaka using robotic technology. The patient remains in Zambia. A local medical team stays beside the operating table. The surgeon controls robotic instruments remotely, guiding every movement with remarkable precision. What once required expensive international travel, months of waiting or a referral abroad could eventually become available without anyone boarding a plane.

This is no longer science fiction. Remote robotic surgery has already been successfully demonstrated in several countries, showing that expertise itself can travel digitally rather than physically.

Of course, there are understandable concerns. Technology can fail. Internet connections can be interrupted. Artificial intelligence can reflect bias if it has been trained on incomplete or poor-quality data. None of these are trivial risks. However, we should remember that healthcare has always evolved by improving systems rather than abandoning them altogether. Every major medical advance has required trust, regulation, testing and careful human oversight. Artificial intelligence should be no different.

As someone who has lived with Type 1 diabetes for more than three decades, I have watched this evolution happen quietly in my own lifetime. When I was diagnosed as a child, managing diabetes meant pricking my finger several times a day and writing blood sugar readings into a notebook. Every hospital appointment depended on how carefully those handwritten records had been kept. If you forgot your diary, much of the story disappeared with it.

Today, I wear a glucose sensor that records my blood sugar continuously. The information is sent automatically to my phone every few minutes. In many parts of the world, parents can monitor their child’s glucose from another location, partners receive alerts if someone experiences dangerous overnight lows, and doctors can review weeks or months of data before a consultation even begins.

That is not robotics. But it is exactly the same journey. Healthcare is becoming connected. Information is moving faster than people ever could.

For many of us, these advances become so normal that we stop noticing them. Yet if someone had described continuous glucose monitoring to my parents thirty years ago, it would have sounded almost impossible. The technology we now take for granted was once every bit as futuristic as the robots showcased in Geneva this week.

Perhaps that is why I find Zambia’s presence at the summit encouraging. It reminds us that the conversation is no longer only about wealthy nations inventing technology while everyone else catches up. Young Zambians are learning robotics, coding and artificial intelligence because they understand that tomorrow’s economy will reward those who create solutions, not simply those who consume them.

That does not mean every school will suddenly have robotics laboratories or every hospital will receive cutting-edge equipment next year. Zambia still faces significant challenges. Reliable electricity, affordable internet, digital literacy and healthcare infrastructure remain essential foundations. Artificial intelligence cannot compensate for weak systems. In many ways, it exposes where those systems need strengthening most.

The opportunity, therefore, is not to chase technology because it is fashionable. It is to ask whether technology genuinely solves the problems we already have.

Could artificial intelligence help reduce diagnostic delays in rural clinics? Could it support overwhelmed healthcare workers? Could remote monitoring improve chronic disease management? Could farmers use predictive tools to improve yields despite changing weather patterns? Could teachers gain access to educational resources previously unavailable outside major cities? These questions feel far more important than asking whether robots will replace us.

Perhaps the greatest lesson from Geneva is not about artificial intelligence at all. It is about ambition. Countries that invest in digital skills today are investing in the industries that will shape the next generation. Those that wait risk becoming permanent customers of innovations designed elsewhere.

For Zambia, the most exciting image from this week’s summit was not a machine performing extraordinary tasks. It was the sight of young Zambians standing in rooms where the future is being designed. Because one day, the technologies transforming healthcare, agriculture, education and industry may not simply arrive here from abroad. They may be built, adapted or improved by people who once represented Zambia on a global stage and returned home believing that innovation belongs here too.

Kaajal Vaghela is a cultural wellness advisor with over three decades of lived experience managing Type 1 diabetes in Zambia and the diaspora. Having previously served as Chairperson of the Lusaka branch of the Diabetes Association of Zambia, she remains a passionate advocate for breaking down myths and building awareness about diabetes. For more personalised coaching or corporate wellness workshops, visit: www.kaajalvaghela.com and for any feedback: [email protected])