An International Monetary Fund analysis said sub-Saharan Africa could increase economic output by about 4 percent over the next 10 years through the effects of adopting artificial intelligence if it improves electricity, the internet and digital capabilities. Without such reforms, the increase over the same period is expected to be limited to 0.2 percent.
Cryptopolitan, a blockchain outlet, reported on July 21 that the report’s focus is infrastructure that supports AI, rather than AI itself. The IMF said the growth effect increases if governments expand infrastructure and train workers in AI-related skills, but the benefits of AI diffusion could effectively disappear if power grids, internet access and digital proficiency do not improve. Co-author Andrew Tiffin (앤드루 티핀) called the 0.2 percent forecast “honestly, at the level of rounding error.”
The IMF said AI risks in sub-Saharan Africa differ from those in advanced economies. In high-income countries, AI replacing jobs is a prominent issue, but in the region the greater risk is that gaps widen because technology is not adopted and scaled quickly enough. It said AI adoption rates in the region are among the lowest in the world, only slightly higher than in South Asia.
Power was cited as the biggest constraint. About half of the region’s population does not have a reliable electricity supply. “If you don’t have electricity, it’s hard to do anything,” Tiffin said. The IMF said building power grids and mini-grids centered on schools, hospitals and other public facilities could also serve as regional digital hubs. It added that data centers could also become projects that draw in new power facilities because of electricity demand.
The second bottleneck is internet connectivity. The report said Africa’s internet usage rate stood at 38 percent in 2024, well below the global average of 68 percent. The IMF said investment in fiber-optic infrastructure and expanding open networks could be ways to lower costs and broaden access.
Investment by private companies is also already under way. Microsoft and G42 announced plans to build a 1 billion dollar, 100-megawatt data center campus in Kenya powered by geothermal energy. Cassava Technologies and Nvidia signed a 700 million dollar deal to install 12,000 graphics processing units in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt and Morocco.
The IMF said it saw it as a risk that such capital is concentrated in some countries. Africa has about 160 data centers, about 5.5 percent of the global total. Nearly half of them are concentrated in three countries: South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya.
Martin Schindler (마르틴 쉰들러), deputy director of the IMF’s Africa Department and mission chief who led the report, said policy changes are key to whether AI can generate additional growth. He warned that if AI investment and infrastructure expansion stay in only a small number of countries, they could widen gaps between countries rather than lift the region’s economies together. It concluded that sub-Saharan Africa’s AI growth potential depends less on the technology itself than on how quickly it can put in place policies on electricity, communications and workforce development.
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