Tech in Rwanda
AI at the Asia Summit
Election Event Contracts
In a conversation with Milken Institute CEO Rich Ditizio at the 2024 Milken Institute Asia Summit, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda highlighted his government's commitment to harnessing technology as a tool for sustainable economic growth.
Kagame discussed his strategy to attract more people and build investment in Rwanda with stability, rule of law, a predictable environment, and ease of doing business. He has long sought to follow this “Singaporean” model of development and has pursued partnerships to position Rwanda as a leading player in Africa’s tech space. One such partnership is the Inclusive FinTech Forum hosted in partnership with Singapore’s Elevandi.
Speaking with Ditizio, Kagame discussed the public-private partnerships at the forefront of his country's push to digitize the economy. He highlighted the digital public service platform called Irembo, which offers a one-stop shop for citizens’ digital ID, tax, health, and more services. The president also highlighted the development of the Kigali Innovation City initiative, which aspires to be an East African hub for tech, education, and finance.
During the Milken Institute Asia Summit, programming explored how artificial intelligence’s (AI) integration across sectors—particularly in finance, health care, and gaming—is transforming economies and human productivity. Bloomberg reports that leading asset allocators and development banks have identified Southeast Asia as particularly ripe for investment in power generation, manufacturing, and the data center infrastructure necessary for the AI economy.
The session "The Sixth Industrial Revolution? Possible Outcomes from Deeper Human-AI Convergence" discussed AI’s application across the economy, from creative industries to quantitative finance, medical diagnostics, and patient care. The session "On AI: Discourses on Application, Convergence, and the Future of Humanity" discussed governance and ethical issues in AI.
Panelists took a deep dive into how AI is already reshaping video game development in the session, "AI-Powered Gaming: Redefining the Global Landscape.” The links between AI and gaming have never been stronger. NVIDIA, the best-performing company of 2024, first manufactured graphics cards for gaming computers before the company found its market niche, selling the hardware of choice for training AI models. During the session, panelists discussed how AI tools are reducing development costs and enabling smaller studios to compete better in the $218.7 billion global gaming market. Southeast Asia is a growing hub for the gaming sector and, TechCrunch reports, is a focal point for Web3 gamers and developers.
This September, the US District Court of DC ruled against the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) by allowing Kalshi, a regulated event contract platform, to offer contracts on the outcome of US elections. After eight hours of trading of event contracts for political prediction markets, the court issued a stay on the ruling while the CFTC appealed the case, effectively suspending trading, Business Insider reports. The ruling has renewed debate on the role of prediction markets in US financial and political systems.
The CFTC had previously expressed concerns that such election markets could undermine public confidence in the electoral process, equating the contracts to gambling. However, Kalshi argued that election markets provide valuable data by enabling contracts on election outcomes, offering insights into political trends, and serving as tools for price discovery and public forecasting.
The ruling follows two other CFTC actions on election prediction markets against Polymarket and PredictIt. Unlike these two past cases, Kalshi is a designated contract market under the CFTC, and the commission had to show that the election contracts were against the public interest, CoinDesk reports.
At this year’s global conference, CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam and Executive Vice President of Milken Institute Finance Michael Piwowar explored the CFTC’s obligation to regulate a contract’s underlying markets. They discussed the potential implications of the CFTC taking on the role of an implicit election monitor if it authorized the contracts.
The question of whether election prediction contracts are in the public interest is particularly salient in the UK, which has long permitted the practice. During the 2024 general election, there were allegations of market manipulation by political insiders, the BBC reports. As the CFTC and courts weigh how to implement this market instrument, protecting election integrity will be a central concern.
