‘If Africa Does Not Build Its Own AI Future, The AI Divide Will Become The Social Divide’

Africa has always been the source, never the ‘refinery’,” Kate Kallot, a techpreneur based in Kenya and known for her work advancing technology access across the continent, says to FORBES AFRICA.  

“We grew the cacao, someone else made the chocolate. We mined the cobalt, someone else built the battery. Data is the new raw material and if we are not careful, AI becomes the next iteration of the same story,” she adds. “African data trains the models, the intelligence flows back as a product Africans pay for, built on realities Africans never validated; optimized for contexts that were never ours.”  

As the founder and CEO of Amini, an African data infrastructure company building sovereign data and compute systems for Africa and the Global South, Kallot actively advocates for placing the continent at the forefront of technological advancement and AI.  

Africa holds approximately 18%-19% of the world’s population but less than 1% of global compute. In addition to this, most general-purpose AI models today are trained on internet data; but millions of people on the continent are still unconnected.  

“If Africa does not build its own AI future, the AI divide will become the social divide,” Kallot says. “And we will have missed the single greatest economic opportunity this continent has ever had, while repeating the most painful pattern in our history–brilliant people; abundant resources; value extracted elsewhere.”  

Kallot was one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI in 2023, and One Young World Entrepreneur of the Year in 2024. She is currently Vice Chair of the International Chamber of Commerce’s Global Environmental and Energy Commission and also member of EY’s Global AI Advisory Council. 

“We have entered an era where you cannot decouple AI from geopolitics,” she says. “And, if your government’s digital infrastructure runs on platforms owned by a foreign power, that foreign power holds the kill switch on your economy.”