Artificial intelligence could boost Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy by about 4% over the next decade with better \u200celectricity supply, internet access and digital skills, an International Monetary Fund paper showed on Tuesday, but without such reforms the growth dividend could be negligible.<\/p>\n
As countries and companies race to secure AI’s economic benefits, investment in data centres, energy infrastructure and digital networks is surging worldwide.<\/p>\n
But \u200bSub-Saharan Africa, which ranks lowest on the IMF’s AI Preparedness Index, risks capturing only a fraction of \u200bthe potential gains if infrastructure bottlenecks remain unaddressed, the paper found.<\/p>\n
“Policy changes will be key to \u2060whether further growth can be unlocked from AI,” said Martin Schindler, Deputy Division Chief and Mission Chief in the \u200bFund’s African Department and lead author of the paper.<\/p>\n
Without decisive action, many sub-Saharan African countries may see productivity and growth \u200bgains of just 0.2% over the next decade, he told Reuters.<\/p>\n
“Frankly, that’s a rounding error,” he added.<\/p>\n
AFRICA PLAYING CATCH-UP TO AI USE<\/strong><\/p>\n Africa remains on the margins of the global AI boom, with Sub-Saharan Africa recording one of the lowest AI adoption rates of any region worldwide, \u200bbehind every region except South Asia.<\/p>\n The IMF’s AI Preparedness Index attributes the gap to shortfalls in digital infrastructure, technical skills \u200band regulatory capacity that limit both adoption and the region’s resilience to labor-market disruption.<\/p>\n “For Sub-Saharan Africa, the central concern is not the \u200crisk of \u2060technological disruption, but whether countries will be able to adopt, adapt, and scale AI quickly enough to capture its benefits and avoid falling further behind,” the paper says.<\/p>\n Around half the region’s population lacks reliable power.<\/p>\n The report said targeted grid and mini-grid investments around schools, clinics and other public facilities could help create local digital hubs.<\/p>\n “It’s hard to have anything without \u200belectricity,” said co-author Andrew Tiffin. \u200bThe arrival of AI essentially \u2060added a new wrinkle to Africa’s longstanding electricity problem, he said, since data centers could also become new bankable projects that speed up electrification.<\/p>\n Connectivity is another constraint. Only 38% of \u200bAfricans used the internet in 2024, compared with 68% globally. The paper said greater \u200binvestment in fibre \u2060backbones and open-access networks could help lower costs and expand access.<\/p>\n Some private-sector investors are already betting on growing AI demand. Microsoft and G42 have announced a $1 billion, 100 MW geothermal-powered data center campus in Kenya; Cassava Technologies and NVIDIA have struck a $700 \u2060million deal \u200bto deploy 12,000 GPUs across South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and Morocco.<\/p>\n Africa \u200bhosts only about 160 data centres, around 5.5% of the global total, with nearly half located in South Africa, Nigeria and Kenya, highlighting the risk \u200bthat AI investment could widen regional inequalities, the report said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Artificial intelligence could boost Sub-Saharan Africa’s economy by about 4% over the next decade with better \u200celectricity supply, internet access and digital skills, an International Monetary Fund paper showed on Tuesday, but without such reforms the growth dividend could be negligible. As countries and companies race to secure AI’s economic benefits, investment in data centres, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14077,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":4,"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":[28,29,32,2362,31,30,27],"tags":[1939,1163],"class_list":["post-21523","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-central-africa","category-east-africa","category-economy","category-featured","category-north-africa","category-southern-africa","category-west-africa","tag-artificial-intelligence-ai","tag-international-monetary-fund-imf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21523","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=21523"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21523\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21524,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21523\/revisions\/21524"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21523"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21523"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qiraatafrican.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21523"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}