A new joint venture, AfricAI, has been launched to drive Africa’s transition from an AI consumer to a sovereign developer of enterprise-grade solutions. The initiative brings together four international technology partners: Lakeba Group (Australia), Next Digital (Nigeria), AqlanX (UAE), and Agentic Dynamic (Netherlands).
The collaboration, formalized through a Memorandum of Understanding, will begin its operations in Nigeria as the flagship market. AfricAI plans to leverage existing national data centers and edge infrastructure to deploy AI applications across key sectors, including healthcare, digital identity, public administration, document automation, and enterprise services.
According to the founding partners, the venture’s mission is to ensure Africa’s AI systems are built locally, reflect regional languages, comply with domestic regulations, and address the continent’s unique societal needs. This approach is designed to give African nations greater control over data, deployment, and decision-making an essential step toward digital sovereignty.
Among its first priorities, AfricAI will develop multilingual citizen services in Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Pidgin, alongside secure digital identity verification, AI-powered document intelligence, and agentic assistants for education, human resources, and policy planning. A Center of Excellence is also planned, with the goal of training more than 100 African AI professionals by 2026.
The initiative further aims to expand beyond Nigeria into Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Rwanda, embedding cybersecurity, compliance, and ethical AI frameworks into its operations. Real-time monitoring and resilient edge infrastructure are expected to underpin these deployments.
Industry leaders describe AfricAI as a pivotal step in Africa’s digital future, positioning the continent as a hub for sovereign, inclusive, and context-aware AI innovation. By building infrastructure and applications on African soil, the venture sets the stage for locally developed AI solutions to scale globally.
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