Africa launches homegrown AI venture to drive digital sovereignty

Four global tech leaders—Lakeba Group (Australia), Next Digital (Nigeria), AqlanX (UAE), and Agentic Dynamic (Netherlands)—have formed AfricAI, a joint venture aimed at developing and deploying enterprise-grade AI solutions built locally for African markets.

The initiative, launched via a signed Memorandum of Understanding, will focus initially on Nigeria, leveraging existing data centers and edge infrastructure to deliver AI applications in healthcare, digital identity, public administration, document automation, and enterprise services.

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The venture aims to shift Africa from being an AI consumer to a sovereign developer, ensuring AI systems reflect local languages, regulations, and societal needs.

AfricAI says it will immediately focus on Nigeria as its flagship market, leveraging existing national data centers and edge infrastructure to deliver impactful AI applications in healthcare, digital identity, document automation, public administration, and enterprise services. The Joint Venture aims to position Africa as an active developer of sovereign, inclusive, and context-aware AI ecosystems — built locally, for local needs.

“AfricAI is not about outsourcing AI to Africa—it’s about building it here, with full control over data, deployment, and decision-making,” the founding partners said in a statement on its website.

The venture will prioritise sovereign AI use cases, including multilingual citizen services (in Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Pidgin), secure digital identity verification, AI-driven document intelligence, and agentic assistants for HR, education, and policy planning.

A Center of Excellence will be established to train over 100 African AI professionals by 2026, supporting expansion into Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Rwanda.

Key goals include embedding compliance, cybersecurity, and ethical AI frameworks into all solutions, while enabling real-time observability and resilient infrastructure across edge networks.

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“Africa will lead its own digital future,” said Prince Malik Ado-Ibrahim, Chairman of Next Digital. “With AfricAI, Nigeria is setting the pace.”

Giuseppe Porcelli, CEO of Lakeba Group, added: “This is about building the AI infrastructure Africa deserves—secure, scalable, and sovereign.”

AfricAI marks a continental shift toward self-reliant, inclusive AI innovation—positioning Africa as a strategic hub in the global AI landscape.

Temi Bamgbose

Temi Bamgbose is a new-generation media professional who has an intimate understanding of new and emerging media communications elements. He possesses a degree in Agricultural Extension and Rural Development from the University of Ibadan. He holds a Diploma in Electrical Electronics Engineering from the Moshood Abiola Polytechnic and a Journalism Diploma from the London School of Journalism.

His career as a multimedia journalist saw him working with several online news platforms including The Punch — the most widely read Nigerian newspaper — where he won, along with his team of two, the 2017 season of the Global Editors Network NAN Editors Lab innovation competition.

Temi has also worked with a number of public relations agencies. He also worked extensively on communications accounts of multinational brands.

He is a wildlife conservation enthusiast.

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