Co-creating With Africa's AI Ecosystem Infrastructure for Tomorrow, Resources for Today
Africa’s AI story is one of momentum. The continent holds many of the critical minerals that power global AI infrastructure and is home to the world’s youngest population – a generation whose optimism towards AI contrasts hesitation felt elsewhere. As part of the AI Hub for Sustainable Development’s flagship programmes, today we are excited to announce the selection of 10 Infrastructure Builders, 20 Compute Ready Innovators, and 100 Compute Curious Organizations that will be driving this momentum onwards with partners from Italy, EU and the G7, ensuring that AI evolves with trust and safeguards, both locally and globally. These programmes form a living ecosystem that connects private sector from 14 Italy-Africa Mattei Plan countries, Italy, the EU and G7 to the compute, partnerships, and markets to ensure AI works for everyone, everywhere.
An opportunity to shape a prosperous future with AI
Across Africa today, when a startup needs computing power to train an AI model, its data tends to travel thousands of miles to servers on other continents. Whenever an entrepreneur wants to pay for cloud services, their local currency is not always accepted. And for a developer building a healthcare solution powered by AI, it is not uncommon that the training data has never seen a patient residing on the continent.
Yet Africa's AI story is not one of limitations but of momentum.
The continent is home to many of the critical minerals that make global AI infrastructure possible. Africa has the world's youngest population, with a median age of just nineteen. This generation is not only ready to shape and use AI, but is highly optimistic about AI’s rich potential in ways that contrast the hesitation felt elsewhere.
In 2025, UNDP’s Digital, AI and Innovation Hub, together with the Human Development Report Office, conducted a Global Survey on AI and Human Development. The survey found that 70 percent of respondents in low and medium HDI countries, most of them in Africa, expect AI to boost productivity. Two-thirds also anticipate using AI in education, health, or work within the next year.
70%
OF PEOPLE Expect AI to boost productivity
2/3
anticipate using AI in education, health, or work
Africa's innovators and Italy’s private sector are shaping the AI revolution in local contexts, building solutions for communities, even as the infrastructure that enables AI often remains beyond Africa’s reach. For Africa like other parts of the world, the opportunity within reach is not merely about catching up, but about shaping how AI evolves, both locally and globally.
Italy’s investment in the Lobito corridor—a rail and logistics route connecting Angola's Atlantic port to the mineral-rich Copperbelt in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia—symbolizes the push for diversified supply chains and Africa's development.
The AI Hub for Sustainable Development builds on this global momentum by connecting Africa's builders with the resources, partnerships, and markets needed for inclusive growth, complementing the grassroots creative efforts led by UNDP’s Timbuktoo. Co-designed with the G7 and the African Union under Italy's presidency, the AI Hub works to ensure that the future of AI is built by, with, and for all.
UNDP's 2026–2029 Strategic Plan prioritizes digital transformation and artificial intelligence among the key accelerators of human development. This approach rests on a powerful principle: development is about expanding people's choices and freedoms. And that principle lies in sovereignty – the freedom to choose one's path depends on the ability to build and have agency in the systems that enable those choices. For Africa, this means ensuring that the digital and AI infrastructure of tomorrow is not borrowed but co-created.
Sovereignty does not mean isolation; it means participation on equal terms.
For example the Blue Raman in the Italy-Africa Mattei Plan aims to boost digital access for 1 billion+ users, supporting AI and e-commerce for EU-Africa-India ties, enabling participation of Africa. The AI Hub’s vision is rooted in this understanding. By supporting locally grounded AI infrastructure and connecting innovators to strategically emerging global networks, the AI Hub seeks not only to expand technological capacity but also to strengthen the freedom to define what progress looks like.
That combination of critical minerals, youth, and optimism defines a unique moment. The sky is the limit—but the possibilities literally stretch far beyond it. With an ever-expanding universe of satellite data now within reach, AI offers transformative pathways to drive sustainable development across Africa, whether by harnessing AI and satellite imagery to identify mineral deposits or by applying these technologies to strengthen food security and resilience across the continent.
That combination of critical minerals, youth, and optimism defines a unique moment. The sky is the limit—but the possibilities literally stretch far beyond it. With an ever-expanding universe of satellite data now within reach, AI offers transformative pathways to drive sustainable development across Africa, whether by harnessing AI and satellite imagery to identify mineral deposits or by applying these technologies to strengthen food security and resilience across the continent.
From vision to action: African AI mavericks driving impact
Today, we are delighted to announce the inaugural cohorts of the AI Hub's Infrastructure Builder and Compute Accelerator flagship programmes. This announcement is part of a broader wave of activities that will be unfolding over the next few months.
This is a period of urgency, optimism, and tangible action shaping the global AI landscape.
From the EU–AU Summit in Luanda, to the AI Impact Summit in India (where leaders of the world will gather for the first Global AI Summit of this series to take place in the Global South) to the Nairobi Forum in 2026 during the 50th anniversary of EU-Kenya, these global convenings will amplify private sector’s ingenuity to re-imagine partnerships for shared prosperity, elevate priorities and carry these conversations forward towards accelerated action on responsible AI.
The response to our open calls for African AI infrastructure builders and compute ready innovators has revealed interests and priorities across communities, as well as the broader dynamics of an emerging ecosystem—one where Africa's builders are not waiting for access but creating it.
Following the launch of the programmes in June 2025, we received more than one hundred applications for the Infrastructure Builder track and over three hundred for the Compute Accelerator—each ambition carrying a vision for a different piece of Africa's AI future and the role that global partners must play.
From Cairo to Kenya, engineers, entrepreneurs, and researchers are building both the foundations and the frontiers of the continent's AI ecosystem. A closer look at the founders selected for both the Infrastructure Builder and Compute Accelerator Programmes reveals that many of them began their ventures between 2022 and 2025. Across the continent, a trend is also seen in experienced engineers and entrepreneurs under forty years old returning from abroad or leaving global technology companies to build Africa’s AI ecosystem. These entrepreneurs see gaps not as barriers but as opportunities, working on everything from localized cloud services to renewable energy for data centers and payment systems that make AI accessible in local currencies.
Two Tracks, One Feedback Loop
The Infrastructure Builder and Compute Accelerator Programmes form a single feedback loop that connects long-term capacity with immediate innovation, where impact emerges in sectors where innovations can scale, drive adoption, and build trust through infrastructure. These living proof points from diverse countries and innovators provide essential, evidence-based insights that directly inform the Use Case Adoption Framework being developed under the India AI Impact Summit.
Infrastructure Builders
Infrastructure Builders
Infrastructure Builders provide the foundations that make these advances sustainable. As new data centers come online, nearby innovators benefit first—not from obligation, but because proximity, local payments, and contextual design make better business sense for everyone. The Builders gain real market intelligence from those deploying solutions today. The innovators gain local platforms designed around their realities. This is development through iteration, feedback, and shared ownership.
Infrastructure Builders provide the foundations that make these advances sustainable. As new data centers come online, nearby innovators benefit first—not from obligation, but because proximity, local payments, and contextual design make better business sense for everyone.
Compute Accelerator ventures generate practical insights that shape infrastructure needs: which languages require better AI support, what workloads dominate local demand, which price points determine accessibility. They show what becomes possible when access barriers lower, signaling where investment and global partnerships should follow.
The Infrastructure Builders: Foundations of Scale and Sovereignty
10 ventures are building the physical and digital foundations of Africa's AI future—from localized data center powered by renewable energy to payment systems accepting local currencies. These 10 ventures provide concrete opportunities for partnerships from global private sector and development financing.
These Builders will pilot scalable infrastructure across 14 African countries, creating a network capable of serving thousands of startups. The programme follows a phased approach: cloud compute, storage, renewable power integration, and local payment systems first, then AI-specific hardware, and ultimately full model training capacity. This will enable Africa to train large-scale models using African data—transforming aspiration into autonomy. Sovereignty, in practice, begins with infrastructure. This is what it looks like: the first time a startup pays for compute in local currency, the first time a model trained on African data runs on African soil.
The Compute Accelerator: Fueling Builders Today
120 African ventures and organizations have been selected to shape and access intensive compute access, technical mentorship, and investment facilitation from November 2025 to April 2026.
While infrastructure takes shape, African innovators need resources now. Many are already solving challenges global markets have overlooked—building AI models that detect crop diseases from smartphone photos in Kenya, training AI assistants that help community health workers diagnose childhood illnesses in local languages in Ghana. Their technology works. But scaling requires computational power they cannot afford.
Only five percent of Africa's AI talent has access to the compute power required for complex tasks.
The remaining ninety-five percent are effectively excluded.
The Compute Accelerator directly addresses this gap. Global partners are contributing significant resources:
CINECA has committed
1.5M
GPU Hours for African Innovators
Amazon Web Services is providing
$1M
in cloud credits
Microsoft will offer up to
$150,000
in Azure credits per qualifying innovator
This programme operates through two tracks:
Compute Ready (20 ventures)
Startups with validated AI solutions and immediate compute needs, addressing crop disease detection, maternal health, education in low-resource languages, and financial access for the unbanked. Three are also Infrastructure Builders.
Early-stage ventures,small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and research groups with strong potential who need preparation. They receive sandbox credits, bootcamps, community learning sessions, and mentorship from global experts.
Together, these tracks ensure Africa's AI ecosystem develops both immediate capacity and long-term depth—building today while preparing for tomorrow, creating the bridge between sovereign infrastructure and active innovation.
Reimagining Partnerships
These programmes mark a fundamental shift in how the world engages with African technology and innovation. They move beyond traditional models of aid or transfer into a space of co-creation—where African innovators define the challenges, design the solutions, and lead the implementation, while international partners contribute what is needed to make those solutions thrive, embedding shared prosperity and diversification across the value chain.
For the Infrastructure Builders partnership means connections to graphics processing unit (GPU) suppliers, energy integration with renewables, connectivity corridors such as Blue Raman, and investment facilitation, as well as guidance on multi-country regulations from the partner governments.
For Compute Accelerator it includes access to cloud resources from partners, mentorship, technical training, and opportunities to collaborate with technology leaders from the G7, the European Union, and Italy.
Through partnerships with the African Development Bank, Italy's CDP (Cassa Depositi e Prestiti), Confindustria, and governments across fourteen African nations, these efforts create practical and action-oriented alignment between Africa's priorities and global collaboration. The outcome is not dependency but shared ownership—a partnership model where value flows in both directions.
This reflects the core principle of the AI Hub for Sustainable Development: progress in AI must be collective. Africa's innovators are expanding what global AI can look like, and the world is learning how inclusion strengthens the technology itself. Prosperous AI Partnership is no longer about giving or receiving; it is about building together.
Where we stand today is not about helping Africa catch up to G7 AI capabilities, but building a industrial value chain of AI ecosystem where Africa can thrive with global partners. This reimagination is not about Africa replicating Silicon Valley—it is about creating a different model where industrial value chains span continents equitably, infrastructure is distributed rather than centralized, and ownership is shared rather than concentrated. The fundamental bet is that mutual prosperity creates more value than donor-recipient relationships, and that Africa's $1.5 trillion market potential unlocks when foundations are locally controlled.
Cineca: Bridging Continents Through Compute
Cineca, Italy's national supercomputing consortium and one of Europe's most advanced high-performance computing centers, exemplifies this new partnership model. Contributing 1.5 million GPU hours to African innovators through the AI Hub, Cineca's collaboration—supported by Italy's Ministries of Universities and Research (MUR) and of Enterprises and Made in Italy (MIMIT)—is a testament to the Mattei Principles: partnership, co-investment, and shared prosperity.
Cineca's support extends beyond compute access. The consortium offers mentorship on energy-efficient data operations and research collaboration in fields such as climate, agriculture, health, and local language AI. By linking Italy's world-class computational expertise with Africa's innovation potential, Cineca is helping transform political commitment into practical opportunity—a bridge of compute between continents.
Key Contribution
1.5M
GPU Hours for African Innovators
The Compute Accelerator Programme embodies the same philosophy as the Infrastructure Builders: Africa can build for tomorrow while scaling today. Together, they form two sides of the same vision—one constructing the foundations of sovereignty, the other ensuring that innovation does not have to wait for access.
Cineca: Bridging Continents Through Compute
From Recognition to Building
The next four months mark a rare convergence moment in the global AI landscape, with the AU-EU Summit in Luanda (in which the President of the Council of Ministers of the Italian Republic, Giorgia Meloni, is currently participating), the AI Impact Summit in India, and the upcoming Nairobi Forum in 2026 together signaling a decisive shift towards a more interconnected, inclusive, and strategically aligned AI future.
The ventures and organizations in the Infrastructure Builder and Compute Accelerator programmes are joining this critical moment as architects. They are not building products alone; they are shaping the foundations of an ecosystem where innovation can flourish, where talent doesn't have to leave to thrive, and where Africa shapes global AI on its own terms –not on borrowed infrastructure for too long.
This is what sovereignty looks like in practice: not isolation, but participation on equal terms.
It is the moment when a startup in Addis Ababa pays for compute in birr, when a researcher in Nairobi trains a model without data leaving the continent, when an entrepreneur in Accra builds solutions that reflect their community's reality—not based on the assumptions of developers far removed from the context.
Each data centre that comes online, each payment system that accepts local currency, and each model trained on African data represents more than technical progress. It represents a fundamental shift—from dependency to agency, from waiting for access to creating access.
As these two flagship programmes of the AI Hub evolve, they will generate the market intelligence, technical patterns, and investment signals that shape what comes next—not through grand plans, but through the accumulated evidence of what works. The Infrastructure Builders will learn from the innovators they serve. The Compute Accelerator participants will reveal where infrastructure investment should flow. This is development through iteration, feedback, and practical steps private sector is taking.
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