Africa's four largest tech economies have drafted artificial intelligence strategies that acknowledge they are heavily dependent on Google, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Meta for infrastructure – and signal a desire for greater control over the terms of that relationship.
Nigeria, Egypt and Kenya have released draft AI policies from January 2025 that identify dependence on US tech companies as a threat to security and sovereignty. South Africa reached the same conclusion in a draft it published and retracted it in April after an AI tool used to help write it generated fake citations.
AI and policy experts advising these governments tell the rest of the world that most African countries depend on American companies for computing power, funding, and expertise. They are now emphasizing data sovereignty, local talent and better terms from foreign providers.
“Africa’s push for digital sovereignty cannot mean complete independence from global AI supply chains,” said Rachel Adams, founder of the Global Center on AI Governance. “But it could also mean stronger controls over sensitive data, better public procurement rules, investment in local infrastructure and skills, access to African language data sets and clearer accountability for foreign AI providers.”
The structural imbalance is serious. According to the World Economic Forum, Africans account for 18% of the world's population, but the continent has less than 1% of global data center capacity. McKinsey found that the top five African markets combined have less potential in 2024 than France.
African companies are starting to build AI infrastructure, although it largely involves Western technology. Cassava, founded by Zimbabwean entrepreneur Strive Masiyiwa, launched Africa's first AI factory in South Africa with NVIDIA in March, while 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 in Kenya stalled after the government blocked it from completing computing purchases demanded by the companies. According to Hilda Barassa, a Kenya-based senior policy advisor at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, many open-source African AI initiatives receive grants from Meta and run on Google Cloud.
The depth of Western involvement raises questions about whose priorities shape Africa's AI future. Anthropic's AI partnership with Rwanda reflects the tension. The deal “seems like a good deal because then Rwandans will be trained and the government will be able to improve public service capacity. But what's really happening is that Anthropic is creating a very good, low-hanging fruit way for someone to absorb the cost of adoption,” said Ayantola Alayange, a researcher at the Global Center on AI Governance. “Just imagine how many people would be forced to use that technology.”
Some governments are already insisting on data leaving the continent. Ghana, Nigeria and Zambia have recently rejected US-linked health data-sharing agreements that would take citizens' data outside their borders. In the absence of domestic infrastructure, African governments are leaning toward “fragmented” data setups, where processing takes place abroad but data is stored within national borders, said Adeola Bojuwoye, head of the nonprofit Digital Impact Coalition of Nigeria.
But owning the infrastructure is only the beginning. Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit in February, Tai Peichin, policy and program leader at the Tony Blair Institute, said, “We have seen in some other countries in North Africa where they build data centres, put their data in, but then they outsource the management of the data center to a third-party provider, creating a risk of technology vendor lock-in.” “So it's not just about having control, but having meaningful control.”
Continental efforts are underway. In July 2024, the African Union released a Continental AI Strategy, and in November 2025 the nonprofit Smart Africa established the Africa AI Council to pool resources. The $60 billion Africa AI Fund, announced at the April 2025 Kigali summit, targets infrastructure, talent and startups, including 12,000 NVIDIA graphics processing units for hubs in the four largest economies and Morocco.
“There is a real desire to act as a single digital marketplace. There is a real, urgent caveat to China and the US's dependence on those two governments and the commercial actors in those countries,” said Priya Vora, CEO of the Digital Impact Alliance.
Yet African countries 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, Bojuwoye said, making it difficult to measure their Western dependence. Barassa of the Tony Blair Institute favors a regional approach, arguing that no one country has the workload to justify construction alone – but cooperation requires trust between governments that remains rare. “What we underestimate is that the costs of coordination are quite high and there is a lot to be overcome from a geopolitical or political economy perspective between countries, so there is always an incentive for countries to negotiate bilaterally,” he said.