Africa’s challenge with artificial intelligence is no longer about adoption. It is about building the trust, infrastructure and partnerships needed to deploy AI responsibly and at scale, according to Microsoft Corp.
Akua Gyekye, head of government affairs for Africa at Microsoft, said the conversation on the continent has shifted as AI systems become more capable and more embedded in how governments and companies operate.
The central question now is whether organisations can benefit from AI without surrendering control of their data, intellectual property and institutional knowledge.
Microsoft’s Global AI Diffusion Report for the first quarter of 2026 showed generative AI usage among working-age populations at 27.5 percent in the global north compared with 15.4 percent in the global south.
The gap is widening, Gyekye said, and closing it will be critical for Africa to capture economic value.
The opportunity is significant. The African Development Bank estimates that inclusive development and deployment of AI could add as much as $1 trillion to Africa’s GDP by 2035.
But Gyekye said realising that potential depends on creating AI ecosystems that people and institutions trust.
That trust rests on three areas, she said: meaningful choice and openness, partnerships that build local capability, and responsible, secure and resilient deployment.
On choice, Gyekye cited the African Union’s Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy, which lays out an Africa-centric vision for AI in health, agriculture, finance and education.
She said governments, companies and developers need access to a model-diverse and interoperable ecosystem where they can select frontier, open or specialized models without being locked into a single provider.
Openness, she added, should not mean no safeguards. It should mean an environment with common standards and governance where customers retain control of data and IP.
A platform approach can lower barriers for local developers and give governments more resilience as technology changes, she said.
Partnerships are also essential to address constraints on diffusion. Gyekye said no single actor can provide policy, talent, infrastructure and security.
Governments must set enabling rules, universities must build skills, startups must create local solutions, and technology providers must supply cloud infrastructure and responsible AI practices.
She pointed to LINGUA Africa as an example. The $5.5 million initiative brings together the Masakhane African Languages Hub, Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, the Gates Foundation and Google.org to develop language data and models for African languages.
Twenty-six projects cover more than 50 languages, dialects and sign languages spoken by over 500 million people in 47 countries.
On responsibility, Gyekye said privacy, security, fairness and human oversight must be built into AI from the start, not added later.
Cybersecurity is inseparable, she said, citing Microsoft’s Advancing Regional Cybersecurity Initiative in Kenya with the National Computer and Cybercrime Coordination Committee. The program included a cyber crisis simulation and a toolkit for preparedness.
She also addressed digital sovereignty. It should not be reduced to a debate over where data is physically stored, she said. The broader goal is legal authority, operational control and resilience, with controls tailored to specific risks while preserving the benefits of regional integration.
Gyekye noted a gap identified in the 2026 Africa AI Governance Index between strategy development and capacity to implement. Closing it will require risk-based regulation, procurement rules that assess security and local capacity, and investment in electricity, connectivity, compute, cloud and skills.
“The choices Africa makes now will determine whether it captures the value created by AI or simply consumes it,” she said. “Responsible AI is not simply a governance exercise. It is a growth strategy. Trust is what makes that growth possible.”
