The AI Hub for Sustainable Development is a collaborative initiative accelerating sustainable AI-driven industrial growth in Africa. It focuses on four key foundations of local AI ecosystems: 1) inclusive and representative datasets, 2) local AI talent development, 3) accessible and affordable green computing infrastructure, and 4) enabling environments for responsible AI adoption. Aligned with the commitment to equal partnership with African countries as in the Italy-Africa Mattei Plan, the AI Hub targets sectors including energy, agriculture, health, water, education and training, and infrastructure to harness AI's transformative potential. Complementing existing G7 initiatives and aligning with global AI efforts, the AI Hub serves as a multi-stakeholder platform to steer local, regional, and global private sector collective action across the African continent, ensuring AI benefits all.
At a pivotal moment of the Global Digital Compact, the Italian G7 Presidency and UNDP co-led the design the AI Hub for Sustainable Development. This was undertaken in collaboration with the African Union, governments, industry leaders, academia, and the private sector, particularly start-ups. Co-designing our future means leaving no one behind.
Engaged
Consulted in AI Hub Strategy
Engaged
Being initiated
Key insights from the ‘learning by doing’ pilots in 2024 that are shaping the AI Hub Strategy.
Collaborative AI Landscape: Consultations with ecosystem stakeholders in Africa and globally revealed a readiness for AI collaboration. The private sector, at local, regional, and global levels, can become an engine for transformative AI-driven change through principle-based partnerships and innovations.
Global Engagement Across AI Value Chain: The Startup Acceleration Pilot engaged over 380 startups from nine countries, showing momentum across AI foundations in Africa. These startups focus on key innovation areas including open data access (33%), talent (22%), green computing (18%), and many cross-cutting themes (27%). This distribution across the AI value chain indicates significant potential for creating public goods and ensuring inclusive benefits - particularly for women and other underrepresented groups - in the AI sector..
Building on Existing Country Efforts: The Local Language Partnerships Accelerator Pilot demonstrates how the Hub can leverage existing assets and efforts, such as local datasets and Natural Language Processing communities, while also engaging with major donors, development agencies, and academic institutions. This approach complements projects already underway, focusing on scalability and strengthening use cases in priority sectors including agriculture, finance, and education.
High-quality, representative datasets are crucial for creating AI solutions and products that are relevant, resilient, and innovative. The AI Hub facilitates the development of datasets that accurately represent local languages, values, and needs, minimizing biases and errors in AI systems. The Local Language Partnerships Accelerator programme builds community ownership and replicable public stewardship models for language data.
Upskilling in AI leads to job growth and nurtures a culture of research and development. The AI Hub enables private sector innovations and leverages partnerships with universities and research institutes to build talent networks and address key skill gaps through work-integrated learning. Our ongoing pilots focus on strengthening and diversifying local capacity-building and collaborations.
Essential computing infrastructure is key to building and deploying robust AI models. The AI Hub provides incentives to reduce costs for the domestic private sector and attracts global technology players to enhance green computing infrastructure. Our Startup Acceleration Pilot supports emerging organizations focused on improving computational power for AI in critical sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, and education.
Supporting local AI ecosystems is crucial for ensuring equitable benefits from artificial intelligence. The AI Hub drives collaboration between private and public sectors, promoting frameworks for safe and responsible AI use that are relevant to local contexts. We are committed to embedding trust and safety principles in all our programs, putting people and their well-being at the center of AI systems. At the same time, we work to augment and promote local efforts in developing responsible policies, regulations, and initiatives.
