Vetted by NeuralPress's Multi-Agent Verifier for strict factual validity and event relevance. Our compliance engine cross-checks and filters search results to ensure zero false correlations or misleading content.
Primary Sources
Africa is building AI strategies. But doesn't control the ...
Despite increasing AI policy activity across the continent, the most consequential layers of the AI economy remain externally owned and governed, writes Koffi Yao-Kouame. In January 2024, Google opened its first African cloud region in Johannesburg. Months later, Microsoft and G42 announced a one-billion-dollar investment in cloud and AI infrastructure in Kenya. By 2025, the World Bank’s IFC had committed another $100 million to expand data centre capacity across the continent. These are the kinds of announcements that shape discussion of AI in Africa: large, optimistic, and focused on what is arriving. Less discussed is a quieter question underneath. When the infrastructure is built and governed from outside, what exactly has Africa gained? That question becomes visible in how some of the continent’s most active AI policy settings. South Africa, Kenya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Senegal have all moved seriously on AI, through strategies, institutions, and partnerships. But in every case, the most consequential layers of the infrastructure on which that progress depends remain largely owned, governed, and priced from outside. Their trajectories differ. The structural condition does not. The issue, then, is no longer simply whether African countries are adopting AI or drafting national strategies. It is whether they are entering the AI age on terms they can shape, or through systems whose most strategic layers are controlled elsewhere. What is at stake, in other words, is productive sovereignty: whether states retain enough leverage over infrastructure, procurement, and value creation to shape how AI enters their economies. Who controls the infrastructure? Cloud computing, data centres, and computing power are not neutral utilities. They are privately owned, strategically governed, and concentrated in the hands of a small number of corporations, most of them based outside Africa. When a government in Nairobi or Dakar builds an AI-enabled public service, it usually does so on infrastructure it does not own, at prices it did not set, under service terms it did not write. South Africa makes this especially clear. It hosts the continent’s largest concentration of hyperscale cloud infrastructure. Microsoft, Google, and Amazon Web Services all operate major platforms there. But hosting infrastructure is not the same as controlling it. The architecture, pricing, and strategic direction of those systems are set by parent corporations, not by South African public aut...
How Africa can leverage China's AI expertise
[Photo/Xinhua] The Chinese artificial intelligence startup DeepSeek has revolutionized technological advancement in the 21st century with its AI-powered tool that achieves high performance at a much lower cost compared to its competitors. This has given impetus to other nations in the Global South, such as those in Africa, to benefit from and advance their role in the development of the fourth industrial revolution. AI tools and platforms have the ability to benefit the global economy by modernizing agriculture, promoting poverty alleviation, enhancing security in the financial sector, and improving governance, education and healthcare systems. However, the African continent is at a disadvantage when it comes to the adoption and development of AI due to endogenous challenges such as poor digital infrastructure and inadequate government policies. In October 2023, China put forward the Global AI Governance Initiative, which enables China to provide its solutions and wisdom toward AI development and governance, and this can surely benefit Africa. Further, pushing for equality and inclusiveness, President Xi Jinping said at the G20 Summit in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in November, that AI should not be a game of the rich countries and the wealthy. For Xi, the benefits of AI contribute to shared prosperity. To compete with key players in the AI sector, unlock its digital future and ensure there is equality and inclusivity, Africa needs more cooperation with countries such as China. To this end, under the 10 partnership actions proposed at the 2024 Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, China and Africa plan to jointly build a digital technology cooperation center and undertake 20 digital infrastructure projects and digital transformation demonstration projects in Africa within a period of three years from 2025 to 2027. The two sides also plan to bridge the AI and digital divide, enhance AI capacity building and promote exchanges in governing cross-border data flow. This will spearhead the Initiative on China-Africa Jointly Building a Community with a Shared Future in Cyberspace, proposed in August 2021. The collaboration between China and Africa will enable the continent to bridge socioeconomic gaps, empower marginalized communities and foster inclusive growth through AI techniques. To effectively leverage China's expertise and the 2024 FOCAC Summit partnership agenda, first, Africa needs to embrace more homegrown AI models and solutions. Africa is home...
Compute Forecast | Insights on AI, Data Centers & Digital Infrastructure
Stay ahead of the compute economy with Compute Forecast- delivering research, news, and strategic analysis on AI, data centers, cloud, and digital infrastructure trends.
Amini, Foxconn and Bull Join Forces to Advance Sovereign AI in the ...
The Amini-Foxconn-Bull partnership signals a shift toward locally anchored, sovereign-aligned AI infrastructure and compute capacity built for African and Global South markets.
