Microsoft has warned that Africa risks becoming mainly an Artificial Intelligence (AI) consumer as the continent struggles to close its adoption gap.
Head, Government Affairs for Africa, Microsoft, Akua Gyekye, said this in a statement issued on Thursday in Lagos.
Gyekye said Africa’s AI conversation had moved beyond whether the continent would adopt the technology to whether it could use it responsibly, confidently or at scale.
She said that Microsoft’s Global AI Diffusion Report for the first quarter of 2026 showed generative AI usage among working age populations stood at 27.5 per cent in the global North.
According to her, AI usage stood at 15.4 per cent in the global South, with the gap continuing to widen.
Gyekye said the disparity represented both an economic challenge and an opportunity for Africa to influence how the next phase of AI developed.
She cited African Development Bank estimates that inclusive AI development and deployment could contribute up to one trillion dollars in additional Gross Domestic Product (GDP) across Africa by 2035.
“The choices Africa makes now will determine whether it captures the value created by AI or simply consumes it,” she said.
Gyekye said closing the adoption gap would require trusted AI ecosystems that enabled African organisations to retain control over data, intellectual property and institutional knowledge.
She identified meaningful choice, openness, local capability, responsible deployment and resilience as important foundations for building trusted AI ecosystems.
According to her, African governments and businesses should choose between frontier, open and specialised AI models without being locked into one technological pathway.
She explained that openness, backed by common standards and appropriate safeguards, could lower barriers for local developers and encourage greater participation in the AI value chain.
Gyekye said that choice alone would not close Africa’s AI gap, stressing that partnerships among governments, universities, businesses, startups and civil society were equally important.
She pointed out that technology providers had roles to play through cloud infrastructure, technical expertise, cybersecurity and responsible AI practices.
“The strongest partnerships will be those that build enduring African capability,” she said.
Gyekye highlighted LINGUA Africa, 5.5 million dollars initiative involving the Masakhane African Languages Hub, Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab, Gates Foundation and Google.org.
She said that 26 selected projects covered no fewer than 50 African languages, dialects and sign languages spoken by no fewer than 500 million people across 47 countries.
According to her, stronger AI capabilities in African languages could improve access to education, healthcare information, government services and economic opportunities.
Gyekye also identified responsible AI as critical, noting that privacy, security, fairness, transparency, accountability and human oversight should be built into the technology’s lifecycle.
She said cybersecurity was inseparable from responsible AI as the technology becomes increasingly embedded in government services, financial systems, healthcare and critical infrastructure.
“Trust, therefore, depends not only on preventing attacks, but on resilience: the capacity to respond, recover and continue operating,” she said.
Gyekye cited Microsoft’s Advancing Regional Cybersecurity Initiative in Kenya as an example of collaboration between public and private sector stakeholders.
She said the initiative, developed with Kenya’s National Computer and Cybercrime Coordination Committee, assessed national priorities and conducted a cyber-crisis simulation.
Gyekye said digital sovereignty concept should extend beyond keeping data physically within national borders.
She explained that it should include legal authority, operational control, cybersecurity, continuity of service and the ability to make independent technology choices.
Gyekye said that the approach should provide appropriate controls over data, access, operations and deployment while preserving regional integration and global innovation.
She noted that Africa also needed to bridge the gap between AI strategies and the institutional capacity required to implement them.
Gyekye called for risk based and interoperable regulatory frameworks that protected people without making responsible innovation unnecessarily difficult.
She said procurement frameworks should enable governments to assess AI providers based on security, resilience, transparency, performance and contributions to local capacity.
Gyekye stressed that investment was also needed in electricity, connectivity, computing capacity, cloud infrastructure, digital skills, cybersecurity and high quality local data.
She said that greater support for African researchers, entrepreneurs and developers would help turn these foundations into locally relevant AI solutions.
“Responsible AI is not simply a governance exercise. It is a growth strategy. Trust is what makes that growth possible,” Gyekye added.
