Africa AI Research Atlas · October 2026

Where Africa is building AI

National strategies, compute, capital and the companies doing the work mapped across all 54 African countries, with an honest read on what is live and what is still announced.

countries mapped

with an adopted or validated AI strategy or policy

<1%

of global data-centre capacity sits in Africa

dedicated national AI laws enacted so far

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Leading
Advancing
Emerging
Nascent
Not assessed

Overview

Africa

54 countries in view

Leading

Advancing

Emerging

Nascent

Select a country on the map or in the list below to see its AI policy, infrastructure and builders.

All 54 countries

Showing 54 of 54 countries. Select a row to open the country profile.

Country	Region	Stage	AI policy status

The continental picture

Five countries lead

South Africa, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya and Morocco hold most of the continent’s compute, capital and AI companies. Most other countries are at the strategy or pilot stage.

Compute is the constraint

Africa has under 1% of global data-centre capacity. The continent’s largest GPU programme Cassava with Nvidia has around 3,000 of a planned 12,000 GPUs live, all in South Africa.

Capital is concentrated

In H1 2026, Egypt ($327m), Nigeria ($254m), Kenya ($126m) and South Africa ($83m) led start-up funding. Dedicated AI start-up funding remains small about $38m continent-wide in 2025.

Policy is moving fast

Roughly 20 countries have adopted or validated an AI strategy or policy and about 16 more are drafting one. Kenya’s AI Bill 2026 is the most advanced AI legislation on the continent.

Sovereignty is the frame

Governments from Ghana to Egypt to Morocco now describe AI as a sovereign capability local data, local-language models and in-country compute while still relying heavily on international partners.

Announced is not built

Many of the largest headline projects from 500MW campuses to multi-billion-dollar MoUs are commitments still awaiting financing and construction. Power supply gates almost all of them.

Four stages, one continent

All 54 countries, grouped by how far their AI policy, compute, capital and builders have come.

Most Developed Least Developed

Leading

National policy in place, live AI-capable compute, significant capital flows and a visible base of AI builders.

South Africa Kenya Morocco Egypt Nigeria

Advancing

A credible strategy or policy and concrete infrastructure or ecosystem activity under way.

Côte d’Ivoire Ghana Ethiopia Rwanda +12 more

Emerging

Strategy, roadmap or first infrastructure in development; early ecosystem

DR Congo Zimbabwe Angola +18 more

Nascent

Little dedicated AI policy or infrastructure activity to date.

Sudan Niger Chad +9 more

Stages are a qualitative judgement from public sources, not a ranking of countries. Western Sahara is shown as not assessed.

Turning Public Sector Challenges into scalable market opportunities

A Pan-African AI and Smart ICT ecosystem working across five countries with more than 25 ecosystem partners.

Key sources

Compiled by EPF Ecosystem from public sources, as at October 2026. Policy, funding and project positions change quickly; figures are indicative and should be verified before reliance. This page is for information only and does not constitute investment advice.