Joy Agwunobi
MTN Group has outlined a six-point roadmap to accelerate Africa’s artificial intelligence (AI) readiness, calling on governments, businesses, and policymakers to move swiftly in adopting the technology to drive inclusive and sustainable development across the continent.
Ralph Mupita, group chief executive officer of MTN, issued the call while speaking at the Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation (KMF) Inclusive Growth Forum, where he described AI as one of the most powerful tools available to transform Africa’s economic and social landscape. However, he warned that without urgent and coordinated action, the continent risks deepening inequality and creating what he termed a “digital underclass.”
“We must be obsessed and paranoid about not being left behind,” Mupita told participants at the forum, urging policymakers and industry leaders to act decisively to prevent a widening digital divide.
Six urgent actions for Africa’s AI future
Mupita’s six-point agenda provides a framework for how Africa can harness AI’s potential for inclusive growth ranging from infrastructure and energy investment to language, skills, and partnerships.
First, he emphasised the need for a more robust and sustainable energy supply, noting that AI technologies are energy-intensive and require significant power to operate efficiently. He referenced the International Energy Agency’s (IEA) estimate that Africa would need over $200 billion in annual investments by 2030 to achieve its energy and climate-related goals.
He added that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) had observed that global data centres already consume as much electricity as some of the world’s largest economies, warning that power demand from these centres could triple by 2030.
Second, Mupita stressed that Africa’s current digital infrastructure is grossly inadequate for the demands of the AI age. Despite representing about 18 percent of the global population, Africa holds less than 2 percent of the world’s data centre capacity. Citing the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), he noted that the continent would need about $96 billion in capital expenditure by 2030 to close its digital infrastructure gap.
Third, he called for accelerated efforts to develop large language models (LLMs) tailored to Africa’s linguistic diversity. “Africa needs to speed up the development of its own large language models (LLM) to power AI-driven solutions for its 1.5 billion people. There are more than 2 000 distinct African languages and Mupita said that fewer than 2 percent of them are supported by mainstream LLMs.”
Building Africa’s linguistic and digital identity
Mupita’s remarks built on an earlier call to action he made in New York on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in September, where he supported Nigeria’s initiative to build datasets for African languages and fund academic research in this field.
That appeal followed the launch of the Nigerian Atlas for Languages & AI at Scale (N-ATLAS), an open-source multilingual AI model aimed at preserving and promoting Nigeria’s diverse linguistic heritage. The project seeks to create rich datasets that can power inclusive, AI-driven solutions across Africa.
“Language is a vital part of identity,” Mupita said, “and developing AI models that understand our voices, dialects, and expressions is fundamental to ensuring Africa participates meaningfully in the AI revolution.”
Developing Africa’s youth for an AI-driven economy
Beyond infrastructure and language models, Mupita identified skills development as a critical enabler of Africa’s AI future. He described the continent’s youthful population expected to form the world’s largest workforce by 2050 as a strategic advantage that must be harnessed through targeted investment in digital education and training.
He cited estimates that by 2030, sub-Saharan Africa could have as many as 230 million digital jobs, underscoring the urgency to prepare young people for opportunities in emerging technology fields.
“We must ensure that the number of new and augmented jobs exceeds the number of jobs lost,” he warned, “Our youth are our greatest asset, but they can also become our greatest divide if we fail to act.”
Mupita also highlighted the potential of AI to transform high-impact sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, and education, where technology could deliver practical solutions to longstanding development challenges. He urged African nations to pursue both traditional AI and generative AI to unlock innovation at scale and improve productivity across these sectors.
Concluding his address, Mupita underscored the importance of collaboration and shared responsibility in advancing Africa’s AI agenda. He said that for the continent to move from being a mere consumer of AI technologies to becoming a creator and innovator, partnerships between governments, the private sector, and civil society were indispensable.
“To give African AI initiatives scale and sustainability, we must work together on policy, on data governance, and on skills development. And we must do this without delay,” he urged.
