Tech leaders say the economic shift driven by artificial intelligence (AI) will exceed the impact of the mobile-money boom and are urging African nations to invest urgently in local data centres and renewable power.
The Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) reports that Sub-Saharan Africa processes about $1.4 trillion in mobile-money transactions each year, with Kenya accounting for a large share as Central Bank of Kenya data show 94.2 million registered accounts by June 2026 and hundreds of billions of shillings moved monthly.
Hardy Pemhiwa, chief executive of Cassava Technologies, told BBC Africa Enterprise that AI will break language barriers and could deliver a “100x impact” compared with mobile money, adding “Where the mobile money revolution was about bringing the previously excluded into the financial ecosystem, AI is about bringing everybody else who was excluded by virtue of language.”
He warned that Africa risks missing a huge economic windfall without its own digital infrastructure, noting that the continent, despite a $3.5 trillion GDP, holds only about 1 per cent of the world’s data-centre capacity and could repeat the pattern of exporting raw data.
“If we don’t have our own AI compute solutions and our own digital infrastructure on the continent, we are repeating exactly the same pattern that we have seen over the years,” Pemhiwa said, adding “We’ve done it with cocoa; we’ve done it with minerals. The data sits here with us. It doesn’t have to be exported.”
Cassava Technologies is constructing a 110,000-kilometre fibre-optic link from Cairo to Cape Town and establishing AI data factories in South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, Egypt and Morocco to tap regional data.
The rollout faces a power challenge; the International Energy Agency notes Africa holds 60 per cent of global solar potential but generates just 1 per cent of solar electricity, a shortfall that threatens data-centre reliability.
Linda Mabhena-Olagunju, founder of DLO Energy Resources Group, which recently helped raise $350 million for a wind farm serving 300,000 homes, said the main obstacle is a lack of early-stage risk capital, stating “Most of the funding we need on this continent is for early-stage development. When there’s a piece of land that has absolutely nothing on it, when it requires permitting, a feasibility study, grid studies… no one is looking at deploying capital to the early-stage risk.”
She called for clear regulatory frameworks and integrated resource plans from governments to give investors confidence.
Mabhena-Olagunju also argued that the energy transition must be financed locally to avoid capital outflows, saying “When you have massive foreign participation and shareholding, that’s capital outflows. That money leaves,” and “When you have a local developer, the dividends we make stay on this continent. We should really be thinking about how we invest in local developers and local manufacturers because the job is created here.”
