The East African Community (EAC) has moved to anchor a region-wide artificial intelligence strategy with the adoption of a declaration committing Partner States to establish a Regional AI Technologies Fund, even as Uganda races ahead with plans to host Africa’s first AI “factory” and continental financiers line up billions for the sector.
- •The declaration, adopted in Kigali, comes amid a broader continental push led by the African Development Bank (AfDB) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), which have jointly launched a US$10 billion initiative to accelerate AI adoption and unlock up to 40 million jobs across Africa by 2035.
- •Together, the three developments mark a shift from fragmented digital policies to coordinated, large-scale investments positioning East Africa as an emerging hub in the global AI economy.
- •At the heart of the EAC plan is a proposed Regional AI Fund designed to mobilise blended finance and crowd in private capital to scale homegrown innovations into commercially viable solutions.
Ministers say the move is aimed at closing one of the biggest gaps in Africa’s tech ecosystem that is the lack of sustained financing to take AI ideas from pilot to market.
The bloc is simultaneously pushing a strong “AI sovereignty” agenda, prioritising systems built on local data, hosted on regional infrastructure and capable of operating in African languages such as Kiswahili, in a bid to reduce dependence on foreign technologies that currently process the vast majority of the continent’s data offshore.
That policy direction is already finding practical expression in Uganda, where a consortium of global and African partners is developing a 100MW hyperscale AI facility at the Karuma Hydropower Plant. The project, known as the Aeonian Project, will house a sovereign supercomputing system and is expected to begin operations in phases from late 2026.
Backers say the facility, powered entirely by renewable energy and supported by partners including NVIDIA and European development agencies, could fundamentally alter Africa’s data economy by retaining computing power on the continent. Currently, an estimated 98 per cent of African data is processed abroad.
“This is about controlling Africa’s data backbone responsibly and sustainably,” project leaders said, framing the initiative as a cornerstone of digital independence.
During the Nairobi AI Forum 2026 in Nairobi, the AfDB and UNDP unveiled the AI 10 Billion Initiative, a financing and partnership platform targeting investments across data infrastructure, skills development, policy frameworks and AI entrepreneurship.
The programme is structured around five pillars, data, compute, skills, trust and capital and is expected to catalyse what the AfDB describes as a potential $1 trillion boost to Africa’s GDP by 2035, with agriculture, healthcare and digital services among the biggest beneficiaries.
The AfDB has warned that 2025–2027 represents a critical “ignition window” for AI adoption in Africa, cautioning that delays could see economic gains shift to faster-moving regions.
