Quidah is an online platform that connects investors with curated opportunities and expert insights on Africa’s emerging markets, while offering businesses promotional services, partnership facilitation, and market intelligence to attract capital and grow their operations.
Industries
African nations should borrow, boost domestic revenue and tap pension and sovereign wealth funds to build the infrastructure needed to benefit from an AI boom, the Ethiopia-based United Nations Economic Commission for Africa said on Thursday. The report warned that more than 50 countries on the continent risk missing out on AI-driven modernisation because basic digital infrastructure is still too weak.
The commission said less than 1% of the world’s data centres are in Africa, describing that gap as an economic and sovereignty challenge. It said strategic investment in data infrastructure and energy generation can reinforce each other by supporting digital industries while also improving electricity demand and reliability.
The report said public budgets alone will not be enough, and governments must strengthen domestic tax collection while also tapping financial markets, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and blended finance. It also said African governments should prioritise skills training and fully implement the African Continental Free Trade Area to support a wider technology investment drive.
AI adoption, digital platforms and robotic production systems could help the continent reduce its dependence on commodity exports and move into higher-value manufacturing, the report said. It added that better use of technology could help African countries process more of their critical mineral deposits into batteries, processors and other manufactured goods instead of exporting them in raw form.
The report was released at a meeting of African finance ministers in Morocco, where the commission argued that competitiveness increasingly depends on a country’s capacity to generate, govern and apply data and frontier technologies. The message was that Africa’s AI opportunity will depend not just on policy ambition, but on whether governments can finance the infrastructure behind it.
