For decades, Africa has often occupied the downstream end of the global innovation chain. New technologies were invented, developed and commercialized elsewhere before being introduced to African markets-often at considerable cost and under conditions largely determined outside the continent. The COVID-19 pandemic provided a particularly stark illustration of this dependency. While scientists developed effective vaccines in record time, many African countries faced severe difficulties securing sufficient supplies.

Artificial intelligence presents Africa with an opportunity to change this pattern. The global AI race is frequently portrayed as a contest between the United States and China to build increasingly powerful frontier models. Europe, meanwhile, is often viewed primarily through the lens of AI regulation. Under this narrative, Africa’s role would be limited to adopting technologies created elsewhere.

That view, however, overlooks one of the most important aspects of artificial intelligence: the value of AI does not depend exclusively on who develops the largest or most sophisticated models. Much of its economic value will come from how effectively AI is applied to real-world problems.

Moving beyond the frontier AI race

Developing frontier AI models requires extraordinary resources. The largest systems depend on massive data centers, sophisticated semiconductor infrastructure, enormous quantities of electricity and investments that can reach tens of billions of dollars. Attempting to compete directly with the world’s largest technology companies on these terms would be difficult for most African economies.

But Africa does not necessarily need to compete on those terms.

A more promising opportunity lies in what can be described as sector-strong AI: specialized technologies designed to solve specific problems in agriculture, healthcare, education, finance, logistics and government services. These systems can be considerably less expensive to develop and operate while addressing challenges that are particularly important to African societies.

Consider Africa’s millions of small and medium-sized businesses. Many entrepreneurs spend substantial amounts of time dealing with administrative tasks such as responding to customers, maintaining records, scheduling appointments and preparing routine documents. AI agents could increasingly perform many of these functions as virtual administrative assistants.

If 10 million African businesses were able to generate even $5,000 in additional annual economic activity through AI-enabled productivity improvements, the combined effect would approach $50 billion. The precise figure would depend on........

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