MWC25 Kigali – Laying the AI Foundations: Data and Compute for Africa

AI adoption in Africa continues to face two major challenges: limited computing capacity and a lack of locally relevant data. Although the continent is home to 18% of the world’s population, it accounts for less than 1% of global data centre capacity. Meanwhile, fewer than 0.1% of online resources are available in African languages, compared with 53% in English, highlighting the scale of the digital divide.

In the GSMA session “Laying the AI Foundation,” moderated by Eugénie Humeau (Senior Insights Manager, GSMA), Daniele Tricarico (Head of EmergingTech, CIU & M&E) opened the discussion on how Africa is driving innovation across AgriTech, HealthTech and EdTech despite these barriers.

The session showcased the initiatives helping to close these gaps, from regional data centres and edge computing networks to startups and research institutions developing local language models. These efforts are laying the groundwork for Africa’s next wave of AI innovation.

Speakers included Monzer Ali (CEO, MTN Rwanda) on bridging Africa’s data gap through AI for Telco and Responsible AI, Pelani Malange (Client Engineering Leader, IBM) on energy-efficient, on-premise AI infrastructure, Kate Kallot (Founder & CEO, Amini) on addressing data scarcity and building a sustainable African AI ecosystem, and Pelonomi Moiloa (Co-Founder & CEO, Lelapa AI) on advancing digital inclusion through language models for Africa’s diverse languages.

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