African governments need to collaborate in an effort to set up the right infrastructure and attract investments in capacity building for necessary skills to drive Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption on the continent. This was said at the World Economic Forum 2025, during a panel discussion on “AI: Lifting All Boats” that featured ICT Minister Paula Ingabire, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, Microsoft Vice Chairman and President Brad Smith, and Bill Thomas, CEO of KPMG International. ALSO READ: Davos: Minister Ingabire urges leaders to help bridge gaps in AI access As the race for AI leadership intensifies, access to resilient digital infrastructure, advanced compute capacibilities and strong public-private investment are essential. However, emerging economies struggle to keep up as richer countries increase their competitive advantage. Minister Ingabire spoke about a study carried out in Rwanda whose findings indicate that even with the basic use of AI, such as early warning systems for farmers, public administration processes, AI has the potential to contribute six percent of the country’s GDP. “There is going to be a continuation of already existing foundations in digital transformation efforts. It also means thinking differently on how to close the gap in some digital aspects such as connectivity and usage,” Ingabire said. She pointed to the need to bridge the gap between the increased level of connectivity in Rwanda which stands at 90 percent and the low level of usage, which will requier improving digital skills and affordable internet connectivity, among other things. ALSO READ: Rwanda could earn Rwf730bn from Artificial Intelligence - new study Ingabire added that regional collaboration is very important in leveraging and advancing the use of AI technologies for developing goals as it enables countries with resource constraints such as energy and data, to work together. “When we look at the energy demand that is going to be in terms of AI workloads, we cannot satisfy the demand short-term, we are already working with the East Africa Community to tap into excess energy pool,” she said. She also emphasized the need to have AI spots on the continent where innovations can be tested and scaled up, which requires to have streamlined regulations that will enable the continent to drive adoption in an equitable manner. From Microsoft's $80 billion investment to build AI infrastructure worldwide, Smith said the tech company would go where there is demand because it is a very high capital-intensive investment. For this reason, he said that establishing a $1 billion data centre in one country in East Africa, for instance, it would be only feasible if the entire region came into agreement to use the data centre. “What drives economic growth for countries is the adaption to the fusion of technology. The most important infrastructure is education so that people have skills to put technology to use,” Smith said, “The biggest shortage in Africa is data scientists...if you bring the capital in, stimulate demand, then you will generate data and put it to use, including in local languages, but only if you have data scientists.” He added that it costs less amount of money to train data scientists than building data centres. Georgieva argued that what would make Africa competitive in this area of AI is for countries to collaborate. “Working in a regional and sub-regional environment is very important for countries to figure out how to benefit from creating a critical mass, but also adopting and operating by the same regulations, thinking of skills capabilities as common good.”
