International Business Machines (IBM) has launched its quantum computer program in 16 African universities. This is the result of a partnership with Wits University in South Africa. This university will manage the remaining fifteen universities’ access to the program.

Also known as IBM Q, the program is based on IBM’s quantum supercomputer. This computer was presented during the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) on January 8-11, 2019 in Las Vegas.

“Q systems are designed to one day tackle problems…seen as too complex and exponential in nature for classical systems to handle […] It’s not your usual ones and zeros. It’s about the superposition of states to create a qubit […] Because of that, and that it has so many different states, the amount of computing you can do becomes exponential,” said Solomon Assefa,  vice-president of IBM Research Africa.

IBM Q, based in IBM’s research centre at Yorktown Heights in New York, will be accessible to African universities via the cloud. According to Solomon Assefa, this supercomputer will support researches in various sectors such as finance, mining and natural resources management.