The article presents artificial intelligence as a rapidly growing force for change across Africa, moving beyond the technology sector to address major social, economic and environmental challenges. It highlights use cases already in operation, from health diagnostics to education and agriculture, and frames artificial intelligence as a potential game-changer for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals on the continent. First published on 23 January 2025 and updated on 27 January 2026, the piece emphasizes that artificial intelligence is no longer a distant prospect but a practical tool reshaping how services are delivered in multiple sectors.
Professor Paulin Melatagia Yonta, a lecturer at the University of Yaoundé 1 and co-author of L’économie africaine 2025, describes artificial intelligence as a strategic lever for predicting epidemics and floods, providing automated diagnoses via medical imaging, detecting diseases from images of plants or skin, and automating learner assessments. These artificial intelligence applications are already helping to compensate for shortages of human resources in health, agriculture and education, while improving yields and boosting productivity. The article also underscores that the growth of artificial intelligence raises questions of digital sovereignty, with Yonta warning that whoever controls the data will control the future, and arguing that African independence depends on regaining control over local data currently dominated by international technology corporations.
The piece details how Senegal’s national artificial intelligence program illustrates this sovereignty agenda by championing local languages, and explains that efforts to (re)attach greater value to African languages are underway in several countries. Integrating African languages into artificial intelligence models and large language models is presented as both a cultural and strategic necessity, to avoid biases and to ensure tools meet local needs while giving African cultures equitable representation in the digital ecosystem. The article stresses the key role of African engineers, noting the urgent need for specialist training and to curb talent drain, as well as the requirement for reliable infrastructure with vast computing power, major storage capacity and high-performance interconnection networks. Given that very few African countries currently possess such infrastructure, Professor Yonta points to frugal artificial intelligence based on networks of small, interconnected machines as a cost-effective and environmentally lighter alternative tailored to the continent’s constraints. The article concludes that artificial intelligence is an ambitious gamble for Africa, offering unprecedented opportunities for sustainable transformation if the region can build data expertise, invest in talent and appropriate infrastructure, and align technological visions with realities on the ground.
