African nations should borrow, boost domestic revenue and tap their pension and sovereign wealth funds to develop \u200bthe crucial infrastructure required to benefit from an AI \u200cboom, the Ethiopia-based United Nations Economic Commission for Africa said in a report on Thursday.<\/p>\n
The continent’s more than 50 countries are at risk of \u200bmissing out on AI-boosted economic modernisation due to lack \u200bof infrastructure, the report said.<\/p>\n
Less than 1% of the world’s \u2060data centres are based in Africa, which poses “an economic and sovereignty \u200bchallenge,” the report said.<\/p>\n
“Strategic investments in data infrastructure and energy generation \u200bcan reinforce each other by enabling digital industries while supporting electricity demand and reliability,” the UN commission said in the report released at a meeting \u200bof African ministers of finance in Morocco.<\/p>\n
The UN report said that “public \u200bbudgets alone will not suffice,” and that governments must strengthen domestic tax collection \u200cand \u2060tap financial markets, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and blended finance.<\/p>\n
Governments should also prioritise skills training and fully implement the pan-African free trade area (AfCFTA) to complement a technology investment drive.<\/p>\n
AI adoption, the \u200breport said, along \u200bwith digital \u2060platforms and robotic production systems, could help the continent diversify its reliance on commodity exports and \u200bsell more finished, high-value products.<\/p>\n
‘Today, competitiveness increasingly depends on \u200ba \u2060country\u2019s capacity to generate, govern, and apply data and frontier technologies,” the UN commission said.<\/p>\n
It said tapping technology could also help African \u2060countries use \u200bmore of their own abundant critical \u200bmineral deposits to produce batteries, processors and other manufactured goods, rather than simply exporting \u200bthem.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
African nations should borrow, boost domestic revenue and tap their pension and sovereign wealth funds to develop \u200bthe crucial infrastructure required to benefit from an AI \u200cboom, the Ethiopia-based United Nations Economic Commission for Africa said in a report on Thursday. The continent’s more than 50 countries are at risk of \u200bmissing out on AI-boosted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20405,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":9,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"1"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","source_name":"Reuters","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,32,2362],"tags":[5011,114],"class_list":["post-20404","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-east-africa","category-economy","category-featured","tag-ai-boom","tag-ethiopia"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20404","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20404"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20404\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20406,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20404\/revisions\/20406"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20405"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20404"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20404"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20404"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}