THIS ARTICLE IS POWERED BY
-B SWAMINATHAN
Africa is rapidly emerging as a dynamic frontier for digital innovation, with key nations aggressively adopting advanced technologies like 5G and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to fundamentally reshape their economies and governance. Countries like Rwanda are spearheading this transformation, prioritizing massive investments in 5G and fiber-optic infrastructure to close the digital divide and enable universal connectivity. This foundational push is paralleled by the strategic integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) across public services—from reducing corruption and speeding up land certificate issuance to deploying pandemic surveillance in healthcare. African pavillions are always the hot attractions in Gitex. The year 2025 also witnessed similar adoptions and some of the leading tech experts from Africa share their views on the development in the region.
KUNDA Esther, Director General, Innovation and Emerging Technologies
Rwanda is aggressively pursuing advanced connectivity and digitization to boost its economy and improve citizen services, according to recent statements on the country’s investment priorities.
The main focus of investment is on expanding 5G adoption and fiber optic infrastructure to reduce the cost of access to quality internet. This effort is particularly critical in Africa, which currently hosts the world’s largest population of unconnected individuals. The goal is to achieve near-universal internet connectivity across the continent in the coming years.
Simultaneously, the Rwandan government is heavily investing in full government digitization. This involves moving all government services online, making them accessible only through a single digital platform to enhance the citizen experience. Success stories from this push include a significant reduction in corruption by mandating digital-only payments, thus eliminating cash transactions across all government institutions and enabling transparent tracking of funds. Furthermore, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for local government officials now track the speed of service delivery, with some services, like issuing a land certificate, now completed in as little as 30 minutes. This commitment to digitalization has resulted in a high phone ownership rate of 78%, with ongoing efforts to increase smartphone penetration.
What is also a priority is the application of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in key socioeconomic sectors. Coming to the aspect of where is AI being applied, I could say specific use cases include agriculture and education, where it is being used to build personalized learning experiences and help teachers track student progress. In healthcare, Rwanda is already utilizing AI for pandemic surveillance by monitoring and tracking key metrics during outbreaks.
While the government did not provide a specific expenditure figure, it confirmed that full government digitization is a national priority backed by substantial public spending over the past 15 years. Looking ahead to the next year, Rwanda is planning the implementation of a new digital ID system and the launch of an AI Scaling Hub to foster new use cases, particularly in healthcare. These initiatives underscore the nation’s strategic use of technology to transform every phase of a citizen’s life, from birth to death.
Modupe Ogunnaike, Technical Pre-Sales Manager, Identiko integrated solutions, Lagos
AI has successfully made mundane tasks easier and is being used for predictive technologies in sectors like finance, telecom, and manufacturing to simplify manual work.
However, organizations in Africa face significant challenges in adopting these new tools. Firstly, there’s a strong reluctance to be the first to adopt; companies don’t want to be “guinea pigs” and prefer to wait until a peer has successfully implemented the technology. Secondly, cost and budgetary constraints are major hurdles. Without fully understanding the technology’s advantages, organizations are unwilling to commit the substantial funds required, leading them to lose out on opportunities. A third issue is the difficulty in getting OEMs or manufacturers to directly enter the local market to sell their products.
For technology service providers, the biggest challenge in convincing customers is invariably cost. Even when customers have a clear need that the technology will solve, they are often unwilling to pay the price. This resistance significantly lengthens the sales cycle, which in Nigeria can stretch up to two years from initial demonstration to final implementation—and even longer for government contracts. The technology is currently a push market; providers must actively push for sales. Customers rarely show up proactively; most often, they only seek out the technology as a reactive measure, such as for incident response, after a problem has already occurred. The goal is to move organizations toward being proactive to prevent issues before they happen.
Faycal Noushi, CEO and CTO, Zen Networks, Morocco
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly present across different domains, and telecommunications is certainly no exception. AI is expected to transform the industry in multiple ways. Even prior to the emergence of generative AI, the industry was already exploring concepts such as self-organizing and self-healing networks. With new advancements, AI will take this to the next step through greater automation and agentic capabilities. This will be highly beneficial for the automated resolution of incidents and overall network management. We are already seeing generative AI projects in telecommunications focused on automated triage and impact assessment, which contribute to a better quality of service by making networks more autonomous and enabling automatic actions. That addresses the operational aspect of making networks more autonomous. Another critical area is knowledge. Right now, diving into a complex telecommunication protocol is time-consuming, often requiring navigation through twenty or more separate documents. If this vast knowledge base is integrated into a Large Language Model (LLM), accessing data becomes significantly faster and easier. Regarding the challenges, like any major transformation, telco companies face scrutiny in terms of justifying the Return on Investment (ROI). Any capital expenditure (CAPEX) project must maintain or increase the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) to be financially viable. Looking at future adoption, the operations will likely segment between services made for consumers and those for businesses, especially in the Internet of Things (IoT) space. 5G has provided the infrastructure for massive IoT, and AI will be highly transformative in managing these systems, for instance, in avoiding congestion. Beyond AI itself, the industry is moving towards being data-driven, emphasizing the ability to serve data and events as a service, which is now considered very important in telecommunications.