While the final deal to “transition away” from fossil fuels dominated COP28 headlines, the Dubai-hosted climate summit also notably spotlighted artificial intelligence’s key role in global climate action. One high-level COP event launched the AI Innovation Grand Challenge to help accelerate the development of AI-powered climate solutions in developing countries.
This potential has already been recognised in the Global South, with African IT firm Bluechip Technologies hosting the continent’s biggest data and AI summit in Lagos, Nigeria just two days earlier to offer Africa’s top AI experts, telecoms leaders and policymakers a platform for harnessing AI technologies to fuel sustainable growth. While Africa’s telcos have driven significant rises in digital connectivity, the continent must now build on this foundation and advance AI-based solutions to fully capitalise on emerging opportunities.
Crucially, this revolution will need to be led by African companies to ensure its alignment with the continent’s ambitions and challenges, with a rising generation exemplifying the local action needed to scale up AI technologies while sustainably absorbing the massive data increases associated with this digital revolution.
African AI on the ascent
As Dr. Ayotunde Coker, CEO of the pan-African Open Access Data Centres (OADC), recently highlighted, AI represents “a natural shift in the third age of digital transformation” for Africa. This next phase is already underway on the continent, with Ghanaian vice-president Mahamudu Bawumia pointing to Africa’s young, soaring population and massive surge in AI investments as “a goldmine at our fingertips.” While the continent is playing catch-up with some other regions on the AI front, Africa’s digital divide and sustainable development challenges have pushed this technology up the priority list for government and private sector leaders in Africa.
AI notably topped the agenda at the late-November African Union (AU) summit, with member-states recognising the next-gen technology’s key role in achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals and AU Agenda 2063, including addressing climate change, infrastructure and energy challenges. According to Bawumia, Africa – together with the Middle East – is primed for the world’s fastest AI spending growth at $3 billion this year and over $6 billion by 2026, with Accra’s VP asserting that although “Africa missed the first, second and third industrial revolutions…I am determined that our continent will not miss the fourth and fourth.”
Alongside the pioneer countries of Mauritius, Kenya, South Africa, Egypt and Nigeria, Ghana has emerged on the forefront of the continent’s AI wave, with recent progress seen in AI-driven solutions for key fields such as sustainable agriculture and digital education. But while Africa is home to thriving AI startup scenes – with nearly 2,500 firms in over 30 cities across the continent – Western tech giants and concepts continue to largely dominate global AI governance and training data, meaning that emerging AI models are poorly-adapted for the African context.
Building up local AI capacities
Indeed, Africa’s lack of data remains a massive hindrance to AI uptake and skills development, compounding a significant AI brain drain problem and undermining its sustainable development agenda. Thomas Nkoudoud, an AI researcher at CEIMIA rightly advocates for Africa to assume a protagonist role on the global AI scene, highlighting the need to create its own narrative to unlock the potential of its “abundant young talent” to “launch AI in Africa.”
Telecel Group is among the African companies leading the continent-wide effort to develop AI from the ground up and retain its most promising innovators. Through its Africa Startup Initiative Program (ASIP) – a joint venture launched with Startupbootcamp AfriTech – Telecel helps scale up local tech firms providing tailored solutions to improve their communities, with the ASIP Accelerator Programme’s latest cohort featuring the most AI-driven firms to date.
Beyond vital funding and access to investors, ASIP provides its startups with intensive coaching, 1-on-1 mentorship, education and networking opportunities to guide them into the next phase of their development and facilitate their “innovative and positively disruptive ways of treating the African challenges that they have set out to solve,” in the words of Telecel Group Executive Deputy and ASIP Program Director Eleanor Azar.
This holistic accelerator approach was notably championed by World Wide Technology during the launch of its AI for Good Initiative at COP28, with Senior VP Daniel Valle asserting that “securing funding is only the beginning” for climate and sustainable climate tech start-ups,” such as ASIP newcomers Betapawa Solutions and Munakyalo AgroFresh, which require support in “accessing the right technological ecosystem” to transform their cutting-edge ideas into impactful climate and sustainable development solutions.
Rolling out green data infrastructure
Yet, as Telecel has highlighted, lagging data centre development continues to impede Africa’s digitalisation and exacerbate electricity grid pressures, meaning that interventions to expand AI-driven climate tech start-ups will need to be accompanied by an equally ambitious deployment of innovative data infrastructure projects.
Recognising the tidal wave of data that Africa’s AI revolution will generate, Egyptian digital and ICT infrastructure provider Benya Group sealed a landmark partnership agreement with Khazna Data Centers in November that will see the construction of Egypt’s first hyper-scale data centre. With its state-of-the-art design, this $250 million project in the heart of Cairo’s Maadi Technology Park investment zone will provide 25MW of additional IT load capacity to meet the soaring demand of digital firms and consumers.
Beyond providing the foundation for the local development of AI, Benya Group CEO Ahmed Mekky has expressed his ambition for this venture to act as a blueprint and catalyst for digital transformation in the wider North African region. Moreover, by providing the necessary scale and technologies to enhance energy and cooling efficiency, including by recycling energy, hyper-scale data centre projects such as the Benya-Khazna collaboration offer vital sustainable solutions to slash CO2 emissions, cut electricity usage and avoid undermining AI’s contribution to climate action.
With the right support in place to build up local AI-based companies and sustainable digital infrastructure, Africa has the potential to emerge as a key player in this rapidly-evolving technology. While the global cooperation displayed at COP28 is vital, the continent will need to develop its own unique approach to AI, striking the right balance between innovation and safety to tackle climate change while spurring the digital economy and spreading its socioeconomic benefits to all.