Africa holds a disproportionately large share of the world’s critical minerals—the raw materials needed for batteries, semiconductors, and electronics that power AI hardware.
The recently concluded 2026 Global AI Summit in India has confirmed what many policymakers and experts have already sensed but few have fully internalised: that artificial intelligence has entered its industrial phase. The conversation has shifted as AI is no longer primarily about model releases, chat interfaces, or startup valuations. It is now about compute capacity, energy infrastructure, mineral supply chains, governance architecture, and national competitiveness. And in that equation, Africa is not peripheral but foundational.
The Minerals Beneath the Algorithms
It is no longer news that artificial intelligence runs on chips, chips run on critical minerals, data centres run on energy, and hardware depends on complex global supply chains. At the heart of this supply chain is Africa, sitting centrally and strategically, powering the innovation of the 21st century. Africa holds a disproportionately large share of the world’s critical minerals—the raw materials needed for batteries, semiconductors, and electronics that power AI hardware.
For instance, the Democratic Republic of Congo supplies roughly 70 per cent of the world’s cobalt — a critical component in lithium-ion batteries and high-performance electronics. Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Nigeria are expanding lithium exploration; Madagascar and Mozambique are major sources of graphite. In 2021, they were the third-largest producers of graphite, each accounting for 6 per cent of global production. South Africa remains central to manganese production, with an estimated 70 per cent of the world’s known manganese resources. Several African states hold rare earth element reserves vital to advanced electronics and semiconductors. This deep mineral endowment gives Africa a structural advantage in the materials economy of AI if that advantage is strategically harnessed rather than simply exported.
The International Energy Agency has repeatedly warned that demand for critical minerals is set to multiply as digital technologies, electric vehicles, and AI infrastructure expand. This means the AI revolution is materially dependent on African resources.
Yet Africa captures only a small fraction of the downstream value generated from these inputs. According to research, African states collectively hold roughly 30 per cent of the world’s critical mineral reserves (including cobalt, lithium, graphite, nickel, and rare earth elements), but capture only about 10 per cent of the revenue generated from them globally.
Raw materials are only exported from these countries, while processing, chip fabrication, model training, and AI platform dominance occur elsewhere.
If this pattern persists, the continent risks becoming the mineral base of the AI economy while importing the intelligence layer built on top of its own resources. That would be digital extractivism, a familiar story in a new technological form.
AI Is Now Industrial Policy
At the India summit, the most consequential signals were not product demonstrations. Rather, there have been commitments around compute capacity, data centre expansion, and formalised governance frameworks. India is positioning itself as a major AI infrastructure hub, building large-scale digital public infrastructure and encouraging private investment in hyperscale data centres. This approach aligns AI with its national economic planning.
Globally, AI is being discussed alongside energy policy, telecommunications infrastructure, and advanced manufacturing. This reframing and global AI strategy matters deeply for Africa. If AI is industrial policy, then African AI strategy cannot remain confined to innovation hubs and pilot projects. It must intersect with mineral policy, energy strategy, trade negotiations, industrial processing capacity, higher education reform, digital public infrastructure, and regional economic coordination. Anything less will limit value capture and make Africa less competitive in the long run.
Compute Sovereignty: The Hidden Variable
One of the most understated but decisive issues in the AI era is compute. Training advanced AI systems requires enormous processing power. Running inference at scale requires cloud infrastructure. Hosting AI applications for government use demands secure data environments. Today, many African startups and public institutions rely on foreign cloud providers. While this is pragmatic in the short term, it creates a structural dependency. Only countries that invest in domestic or regional computing capacity gain leverage as they reduce cost volatility, strengthen data governance and build local expertise. The reality is, Africa does not need to replicate the Silicon Valley model; what it needs is a coherent compute strategy. Regional GPU clusters shared across economic blocs, incentives for hyperscale data centre development, energy infrastructure planning aligned with digital growth, and public-private partnerships that ensure technology transfer. Without compute capacity, AI ambition remains aspirational on the continent.
Digital Public Infrastructure as a Foundation
India’s experience demonstrates a structural truth about artificial intelligence: AI scales most effectively when layered on top of digital public infrastructure — interoperable identity systems, payment rails, secure data exchange frameworks, and standardised digital protocols. In India’s case, platforms such as Aadhaar (digital ID), UPI (unified payments interface), and public data exchange layers created the rails upon which AI applications could operate at population scale. AI is not replacing infrastructure; it is amplifying infrastructure that already works.
For Africa, this distinction is crucial. While the continent has made notable progress in digital public infrastructure over the past decade. Mobile money platforms such as M-Pesa in Kenya and similar systems across East Africa have transformed financial inclusion, integrating millions of previously unbanked citizens into formal digital economies. According to the World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa accounts for nearly half of global mobile money accounts, illustrating how foundational payment rails can scale rapidly when aligned with regulatory support.
National digital identity systems are also expanding. Nigeria’s National Identification Number (NIN) initiative and Kenya’s Huduma Namba programme represent attempts to establish population-scale identity frameworks. Meanwhile, digital tax systems, e-procurement portals, and government service digitisation efforts are emerging across countries such as Rwanda, Ghana, and South Africa.
These are important building blocks. However, building blocks are not yet systems.
Integration remains uneven as databases are often siloed within ministries. Health records may not communicate with identity systems. Agricultural registries may not connect to payment platforms. Social protection databases may not integrate with tax systems. In some cases, legacy systems coexist with newer digital platforms without interoperability standards. Artificial intelligence systems depend on reliable, structured, and interoperable data flows. Predictive agriculture models require integrated weather, land, and farmer data. Health diagnostics systems require standardised electronic medical records. Automated tax compliance systems require linked business, identity, and financial records. AI-based targeting for social protection depends on harmonised population and income datasets.
Where data is fragmented, AI cannot scale responsibly as weak interoperability limits automation gains in agriculture, healthcare, taxation, social protection, and urban planning. AI models trained on incomplete or inconsistent datasets produce unreliable outputs. Public trust erodes when digital systems fail to reflect lived realities.
Moreover, AI amplifies both strengths and weaknesses. If underlying digital systems are efficient and interoperable, AI enhances productivity. If they are fragmented and inconsistent, AI magnifies inefficiency. This is why digital public infrastructure must be treated as strategic national capital and not merely an ICT modernisation project. It is the backbone of future governance capacity.
For African governments, this implies three shifts.
First, interoperability must become a design principle, not an afterthought. Identity systems, payment systems, health registries, education databases, and land records must communicate through secure, standardised data exchange protocols. This requires cross-ministerial coordination and technical standards frameworks.
Second, data governance must evolve alongside integration. As systems connect, privacy safeguards, cybersecurity protocols, and clear legal mandates become essential. Digital public infrastructure cannot scale sustainably without trust.
Third, digital public infrastructure investment must be embedded in fiscal and industrial planning. It should sit alongside energy, transport, and telecommunications in national development strategies.
If AI is to meaningfully improve public service delivery in Africa — reducing leakages in social protection, increasing tax compliance, optimising agricultural subsidies, improving health diagnostics, and strengthening urban planning — it must operate on reliable digital rails. Those rails do not build themselves.
Governance Is Strategic Power
The India summit also reflected a global shift toward formalising AI governance frameworks. Now, Responsible AI is moving from principle to architecture. International institutions, including the United Nations, have emphasised the risk of widening digital divides and called for multibillion-dollar efforts to help developing countries build AI capacity — including skills development, data access, and affordable compute infrastructure.
Governance, in this context, is not a constraint. It is leverage. If global AI standards are defined without meaningful African participation, the continent will adapt to frameworks written elsewhere. That weakens strategic autonomy.
African Union institutions and sub-regional bodies can play a stronger role in coordinating continental AI governance principles, building shared regulatory expertise and presenting unified positions in global AI negotiations
Fragmented engagement diminishes influence. Coordinated engagement increases it.
The Execution Gap
Africa’s demographic dividend is real. The continent’s median age is under 20 in many countries. Startup ecosystems are expanding in Lagos, Nairobi, Kigali, Cairo, and Cape Town. Universities are increasingly integrating AI into research agendas.
Nigeria has developed a National AI Strategy. The Nigeria AI Collective is fostering cross-sector coordination. These are meaningful foundations, but foundations are not systems. The structural risk for Africa is fragmentation — overlapping initiatives, donor-driven projects without national integration, and parallel policies across ministries.
For AI to scale in Africa, execution discipline will determine outcomes. AI must move beyond sectoral enthusiasm and become a whole-of-government priority, embedded in budgeting processes, industrial planning, procurement reform, and measurable targets.
Perhaps the most urgent strategic adjustment for Africa is to link mineral policy to digital sovereignty. Mineral agreements should not focus solely on royalties and export volumes. They should embed important nuance like local processing requirements, technology transfer provisions, research partnerships with African universities, workforce development commitments and integration with regional manufacturing strategies
If Africa is central to the AI hardware supply chain, it must negotiate for participation in downstream segments of that chain—battery manufacturing hubs, semiconductor assembly, and AI research centres co-located with mineral processing facilities. Mineral leverage is only powerful when strategically deployed.
A Continental Strategy for Value Capture
Five priorities emerge for African leaders:
First, integrate mineral policy with industrial technology strategy. Resource extraction must translate into manufacturing and digital capability, not just fiscal revenue.
Second, invest in regional compute infrastructure. Shared facilities can reduce costs and increase bargaining power in global negotiations.
Third, strengthen digital public infrastructure. Interoperable systems are prerequisites for AI adoption at scale.
Fourth, build human capital across the AI value chain — from data science to semiconductor engineering, governance design, and energy systems.
Fifth, coordinate continentally. The African Continental Free Trade Area provides a framework for deeper integration. AI strategy can be embedded within it.
The AI era is accelerating with supply chain consolidation and massive capital mobilisation. Today, governance norms are hardening, and Africa sits at the base of this technological transformation. But foundations can either anchor power or remain invisible beneath it. The continent that fuels the hardware of artificial intelligence cannot afford to remain absent from its intelligence layer.
African leaders face a defining choice: continue exporting raw inputs while importing finished systems, or leverage mineral centrality to build downstream capacity and digital sovereignty.
The AI race is not simply about who builds the most advanced models; it is about who builds the most coherent systems—aligning resources, infrastructure, governance, capital, and talent. Africa has the resources, the demographics, and emerging innovation ecosystems. What remains is strategic coordination and disciplined execution. If Africa supplies the minerals, it must also claim the value. The AI reckoning is not coming; it is here, and the decisions made now will determine whether the continent remains a resource base or becomes a strategic power in the age of artificial intelligence.