How Africa can thrive with agentic AI

Agentic artificial intelligence (AI) will have a major impact on Africa but while some are already investing in AI strategies and innovation, Africa remains underrepresented in global AI development.
Many AI tools used in Africa rely on Western datasets, not reflective of African populations or realities, meaning AI systems perform less effectively for African patients and communities.
AI can improve healthcare and other facets of African society if there is investment in African talent, data infrastructure and economic development.

The theme of this month’s World Economic Forum Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China is “Innovating at Scale.”

This is exactly the right challenge to address and there is a response the global agenda has not yet fully confronted. The distance between technological breakthrough and broad-based human benefit is a problem that affects us all.

Nowhere is that gap more consequential than in the rise of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) – AI systems that can take actions, make decisions and operate autonomously – and its implications for the world’s youngest continent, Africa.

I was recently reminded of a chapter I wrote in 2020 about the world wide web and the fight for universal access. Re-reading it now feels like opening a letter from a different era.

The arguments were sound enough for their moment but the ground shifted faster than almost anyone anticipated and the institutions, frameworks and vocabulary we built to govern the digital world are now chasing a revolution that has moved at least two steps ahead of them.

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As the world’s most youthful continent, this is where the reality of the AI era will be felt most profoundly.

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There is no cross-border approach to AI

The difference between the web and this new generation of AI is not one of degree. It is one of kind. The web was about the freedom to access information, and this new generation of AI is more concerned with the kind of freedom it enables. The…

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