Country Head, Zoho Nigeria, Mr. Kehinde Ogundare, has said that Africa faces a new set of constraints around software development capacity and technical talent, adding that the cost of building digital tools demands exactly the same creative leap, as experienced with the M-Pesa mobile payments platform in Kenya.
According to him, addressing the challenges will require the same kind of practical innovation that previously reshaped financial inclusion across the continent.
“The numbers make the challenge plain. Africa’s internet economy was projected to contribute $180 billion (5.2 per cent) of aggregate GDP, by 2025. Meanwhile, cloud adoption is expanding at 25 to 30 per cent annually, outpacing Europe and North America, while thousands of African companies are already experimenting with AI-enabled operations. Yet, the human infrastructure required to sustain this momentum is not keeping pace. Unless the continent finds smarter and more scalable ways to build digital systems, Africa risks becoming the world’s largest consumer of a digital future it did not help design,” Ogundare said.
According to him,Africa’s AI challenge is not a lack of ambition or demand, but the widening gap between the pace of technological change and the availability of skills needed to support it. Across the continent, organisations are under growing pressure to build AI capability quickly, as shortages in specialised talent increasingly affect innovation, competitiveness, and the ability to fully participate in the global digital economy.
