Africa’s four biggest tech economies have each drafted artificial intelligence strategies admitting they depend too heavily on Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Meta for infrastructure and want more control over the terms.
Nigeria, Egypt, and Kenya have released draft AI policies since January 2025 that identify dependence on U.S. tech companies as a threat to security and survival. South Africa reached the same conclusion in a draft it published and withdrew in April this year after the AI tools used to help write it generated fake citations
Most African nations rely on U.S. companies for computing power, funding, and expertise, AI and policy experts who advise these governments told Rest of World. They are now pushing for data sovereignty, local talent, and better terms from foreign providers, the experts said
“Africa’s push for digital sovereignty cannot mean total independence from global AI supply chains,” Rachel Adams, founder of the Global Center on AI Governance, told Rest of World. “But it can mean stronger control over sensitive data, better public procurement rules, investment in local infrastructure and skills, African language data sets, and clearer accountability for foreign AI providers.”
Africans comprise 18% of the world’s population, but the continent has less than 1% of global data center capacity, according to the World Economic Forum. The top five African markets combined have less capacity than France had in 2024, McKinsey found.
African companies are starting to build AI infrastructure with Western technology behind it. Cassava, founded by Zimbabwean entrepreneur Strive Masiyiwa, launched Africa’s first AI factory in South Africa with Nvidia in March, and East African data center provider iXAfrica is working with Oracle to deliver Kenya’s first public cloud region.
Microsoft’s $1 billion data center with G42 Kenya stalled after the government held back from committing to the computing purchases the companies demanded. Several open-oogle Cloud, Hilda Barasa, a Kenya-based senior policy adviser at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, told Rest of World
The depth of Western involvement raises questions about whose priorities shape Africa’s AI future, Cambridge University researcher Kofi Yeboah found. Anthropic’s AI partnership with Rwanda shows the tension. The deal “looks like a good deal because then Rwandans are going to be trained and the government is going to be able to improve public service capacity. But really what’s happening is that Anthropic is creating a very nice, low-hanging fruit way for somebody to absorb the cost of adoption for them,” Ayantola Alayange, a researcher with the Global Center on AI Governance, told Rest of World. “Just imagine the number of people that will be forced to use that technology.”
Some governments are already pushing back on data leaving the continent. Ghana, Nigeria, and Zambia recently rejected U.S.-linked health data-sharing agreements that would move citizens’ data outside borders
In the absence of infrastructure, African governments are leaning toward “segmented” data setups, where processing happens abroad but data stays stored within the country’s borders, Adeola Bojuwoye, Nigeria lead for nonprofit Digital Impact Alliance, told Rest of World. Owning the infrastructure is only the start
“We have seen in some other countries in North Africa, where they build data centers, put their data in, but then they outsource the management of the data center to a third-party provider, creating risks of technical vendor lock-in,” Tay PeiChin, policy and program leader at the Tony Blair Institute, told Rest of World at the India AI Impact Summit in February. “So it’s not just about having control, but having meaningful control.”
In July 2024, the African Union released a Continental AI Strategy. In November 2025, nonprofit Smart Africa established the Africa AI council to pool reKigali Summit targets infrastructure, talent, and startups, including 12,000 Nvidia graphics processing units for centers in the Big Four nations and Morocco
“There’s a real desire to act as a single digital marketplace. There’s a real, warranted wariness of China and the U.S., dependence on those two governments and commercial actors in those countries,” Priya Vora, CEO of Digital Impact Alliance, a nonprofit that advises African governments on digital development, told Rest of World on the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit
African nations still compete against each other for foreign investment to become AI hubs, Adams said. Many projects, such as Nigeria’s Awarri, have not disclosed their back-end infrastructure, making it hard to measure their Western dependency, Bojuwoye said
Barasa from the Tony Blair Institute favors a regional approach, arguing no single country has the workload to justify building alone. Cooperation requires trust between governments, and that remains scarce, she said. “The thing that we underestimate is that the cost of coordination is quite high and there’s a lot to overcome from a geopolitical or political economy perspective between countries, so there’s always the incentive for countries to negotiate bilaterally,” Barasa said.
