Africa’s largest mobile operator, MTN Group, has warned that while artificial intelligence (AI) offers unprecedented potential for inclusive growth across the continent, failure to act swiftly could deepen inequality and create a “digital underclass.”
“We must be obsessed and paranoid about not being left behind,” MTN Group President and Chief Executive Officer Ralph Mupita told participants at the Kgalema Motlanthe Foundation (KMF) Inclusive Growth Forum over the weekend.
Mupita outlined six urgent priorities for Africa’s AI readiness, beginning with the need for abundant electricity supplies to power economic expansion. Citing the International Energy Agency (IEA), he noted that achieving Africa’s energy and climate goals by 2030 would require over US$200 billion in annual investments. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) has also estimated that global data centers already consume as much energy as some of the world’s largest economies, with demand expected to triple by 2030.
With less than 2% of global data center capacity, Africa must scale up its digital infrastructure significantly. “The continent needs to invest heavily in digital infrastructure, beyond fibre and subsea cables,” Mupita said, referring to the International Telecommunication Union’s estimate that Africa requires US$96 billion by 2030 to bridge its digital infrastructure gap.
He also stressed the need for Africa to develop its own large language models (LLMs) to build AI solutions tailored to its 1.5 billion people. With over 2,000 distinct African languages, fewer than 2% are currently supported by mainstream AI models. Mupita cited ongoing efforts like Nigeria’s Atlas for Languages & AI at Scale (N-ATLAS), an open-source multilingual LLM designed to understand Nigeria’s linguistic diversity and support the creation of African datasets.
READ ALSO
Mupita first raised this issue during the United Nations General Assembly in New York in September, where MTN backed Nigeria’s call to fund research and data collection on African languages.
He further emphasized the urgency of building digital and AI skills across the continent. “This is an opportunity to enable Africa’s rich pipeline of youth, which will make up the world’s largest workforce by 2050,” he said. By 2030, an estimated 230 million digital jobs are expected to emerge in sub-Saharan Africa.
“We must ensure that new jobs and augmented jobs are greater than the jobs lost, particularly with the youth dividend that Africa will have.”
Calling AI a transformative tool to tackle Africa’s pressing challenges, Mupita said the technology’s greatest value would come from combining traditional AI and generative AI in key sectors such as healthcare, education, and agriculture.
He concluded by urging collaboration to turn Africa’s AI ambitions into reality. “To give African AI initiatives scale and joint success, governments, the private sector and civil society must partner on policy, data governance and skills development. And we must do this without delay.”
Mupita’s message reflects a growing consensus among African leaders that the continent’s participation in the AI revolution hinges on its ability to invest strategically and collaboratively in the systems that power innovation.
