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Yinka’s view There is no shortage of pessimism about Africa’s prospects in the AI race. The continent, we are regularly told, doesn’t have the computing power, capital, or energy to compete. But investors and founders I spoke with in Lagos this week don’t see this as another tech revolution that risks leaving Africa behind. Instead they see it as a chance to build new types of transformative businesses with AI, led by local founders and engineers. The enthusiasm has some anecdotal evidence behind it: More than 1,300 companies applied to the inaugural cohort of African AI startups on the Askya Growth Platform, a VC-backed initiative which launched this month. Their task is building the technology and infrastructure that make AI useful in African markets. As Babacar Seck, managing partner of Askya Investment Partners, put it, “Africa cannot be renting AI, we must be making it.” That might mean developing smaller models adapted to African languages, but also systems that let governments and businesses keep control of sensitive data and apply AI to local problems in energy, agriculture, and commerce. Marlon Nichols, a managing partner of Los Angeles-based MaC Venture Capital, which has deployed $20 million in early-stage investments in Africa, also sees an opportunity with venture capital shifting back toward physical infrastructure and technologies that are harder for AI to disrupt. “VCs are going back to atoms, to more physical things,” he told me on stage at Lagos’ Moonshot conference. He is less interested in data centers themselves than in the technology that runs them. That suggests African companies don’t have to build the biggest models to share in AI’s value creation. Enthusiasm won’t guarantee a generation of successful African AI companies as capital remains scarce on the continent, infrastructure expensive, and many startups’ commercial prospects remain untested: Of the startups that applied to Askaya’s program, only 11 were picked this time. “There’s almost no capital today for African AI, yet people are building,” said Seck. Overall, AI-native startups took less than 2% of the $1.36 billion that African startups raised in the first half of 2026, according to Digital Africa. But you can’t overlook the founders already building for markets that Big Tech has long underserved. The opportunity may be less about catching up with Silicon Valley than building an AI industry that works for Africa. Notable - Pharma giant Ro’s new AI healthcare agent, Robin, could be used to perform routine tasks like managing side effects, meal planning, or making medication changes.
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