Compute capacity is not just an infrastructure issue – it is a critical determinant of who builds AI solutions, and who simply consumes them.

This gap—comprising inadequate processing power, unreliable connectivity and limited access to cloud services—is a key contributor to the widening AI equity divide. Despite the continent's vibrant ecosystem of technical and entrepreneurial talent, access to affordable compute power remains a significant barrier to AI innovation.

Africa needs US$2.5 billion in compute infrastructure investment by 2030 to unlock an estimated $1.5 trillion in potential gross domestic product (GDP) gains from AI.

Computing resources remain heavily concentrated in high-income economies, with Global North countries hosting 75 percent of the world's most powerful supercomputers. Meanwhile, the entire African continent hosts less than 1 percent of these high-performance systems and just 2.1 percent of global data centres. Furthermore, these limited resources are unevenly distributed across the continent.

This scarcity drives prohibitively high costs, with graphic processing units (GPUs) required for AI often 10–30 times more expensive, relative to gross domestic product (GDP) per capita than in developed countries.  

The situation is further compounded by unreliable power infrastructure, limited cloud adoption (15 percent compared to 71 percent in Europe), and emerging data localization regulations (further limiting access to global cloud resources) in several African countries.

Only 5 percent of Africa's AI talent is able to access the compute power needed. Designing and adopting strategic interventions will ensure Africa can fully participate in the global AI ecosystem and realize AI's potential to contribute an additional $1.5 trillion to the continent's GDP by 2030.