Africa's AI Divide Widens as New Global Governance Push Leaves Continent Behind

Fewer than 36 percent of people across Africa use the internet. Only 5 percent of the continent’s AI talent has access to the computing power they need. Data centers hold less than 1 percent of the world’s capacity on African soil. These gaps matter now because artificial intelligence is reshaping how societies work, learn and govern, yet access to AI-enabled services remains deeply unequal. The question facing a new global body is whether it can translate ambition into real change for the people and communities most left behind.

On July 2, the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations specialized agency for digital technologies, launched the AI for Good Global Commission in Geneva. The multistakeholder body brings together forty members from government, business and international organizations with a stated mission: to identify practical pathways to strengthen trust, support responsible innovation, and enhance human capability. For the general public in developing regions, the stakes are concrete. Widening access to AI-enabled services in health and education depends on whether this Commission can match the pace of AI’s evolution with real-world deployment on the ground.

The timing arrives amid a crowded landscape. The UN Global Dialogue on AI Governance was established in 2025. The Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence (IISPAI) launched in February 2026. Both emerged from the Global Digital Compact of 2024. The World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS), the ITU’s own digital cooperation forum, also operates in this space. All four bodies met in Geneva earlier this month, each pursuing overlapping agendas on global AI governance. The immediate challenge is clarity: what can the new Commission deliver that the others cannot?

History offers a cautionary lesson. The Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development operated for fifteen years and issued more than seventy policy recommendations across fifteen State of Broadband reports. It seeded lasting initiatives, including the UNICEF-ITU Giga school-connectivity project. Yet when it concluded in 2025, the Commission had missed several of its most ambitious targets. Target 3, “get everyone online,” remains unmet. Africa exemplifies this gap. Advocacy does not always translate into target attainment.

The new Commission does carry one structural advantage. Its co-chair is President Paul Kagame of Rwanda. Its membership includes the African Union’s Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy and the digital ministers of Namibia, Nigeria and Togo. Africa holds the largest contingent of policymakers in the body. The Commission also includes MTN Group, an African-owned company, alongside Vodafone and Orange Group, which operate extensively on the continent. This composition creates an opening for African members to coordinate around shared continental priorities and shape practical pathways for AI governance that reflect the continent’s own needs.

African governments have already mapped those priorities. The AU Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy focuses on building AI capabilities, governance, investment and cooperation, with emphasis on agriculture, health, education and climate change. The Africa Declaration on Artificial Intelligence goes further, articulating seven core priorities: talent, data ecosystems, compute and digital infrastructure, innovation and market development, investment, governance, and institutional coordination. These documents reflect local realities and must become the Commission’s starting point.

Five critical issues demand immediate attention. The first is the AI divide itself. Africa holds under 1 percent of world data center capacity. Closing this gap requires sustained investment in infrastructure, large sets of quality data, AI education and skills, and research and innovation. Two related divides are equally urgent. Internet connectivity remains the entry point to the digital economy, yet Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest share of internet users globally. Reliable electricity is another precondition. The World Bank estimates that only 53 percent of people in Sub-Saharan Africa have access to electricity. Without connectivity and power, the AI industry will not grow.

The second issue is financing. The Africa Declaration outlined a $60 billion Africa AI Fund to invest in AI infrastructure, yet it has not materialized. The African Development Bank estimates Africa’s annual infrastructure financing shortfall at $68 billion to $100 billion. The Commission’s large private sector membership presents a real opportunity to mobilize private equity and blended financing instruments to build AI capacity across developing regions.

The third is governance. As advanced AI systems develop, they require new regulatory frameworks and coordination across borders and sectors. Nigeria is already moving ahead, developing an AI law to ensure that AI is developed ethically and safely while promoting economic growth and protecting individual rights and freedoms. The Commission can promote standards and coordinate with other global organizations setting AI rules.

Meanwhile, the fourth issue is urgent and often overlooked: supporting AI use case development in agriculture, health, education and climate change. This requires building multiple capabilities within African countries, but the most critical element is including the continent’s youth as builders. Africa is the world’s youngest continent, yet its economies cannot absorb the talent they produce. Ethiopia’s 5 Million Coders Initiative offers one model for building market-viable innovations. Youth unemployment continues to generate political pressure across many African countries, with Gen Z protests signaling discontent. The Commission’s private sector resources can help create the innovation ecosystems and market structures that Africa needs.

The fifth issue concerns the risks and harms emerging with AI diffusion. The International AI Safety Report and IISPAI’s preliminary report document labor market disruptions, rapid advancement without adequate governance, and uneven distribution of AI development that concentrates capability in a handful of countries. This concentration risks reproducing inequality rather than addressing it, as diffusion relies on the same firms and infrastructures that produce AI globally. Regions like Africa remain dependent on models that exclude their languages and do not reflect their realities. Harms include the exploitation of AI workers and data annotators, state surveillance using technology to track critics, and cybersecurity incidents related to agentic AI. More information on how the Commission can address these challenges is available at https://techpolicy.press/another-commission-for-global-ai-governance-how-can-it-deliver-for-africa.

The Commission should tackle these issues within its focus area of “AI trust” through convening, examination and advocacy, and through collaboration with other AI bodies. A key opportunity lies in how it interfaces with IISPAI. The Panel was established by UN General Assembly resolution 79/325 to issue evidence-based scientific assessments of AI’s opportunities, risks and impacts through annual policy-relevant reports. The same resolution encourages UN specialized agencies, including the ITU, to incorporate IISPAI’s contributions into capacity-building work. The Commission can add distinct value by taking the annual report’s catalogue of opportunities and risks and defining practical pathways that inform responses and interventions needed for trusted AI deployment.

The Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development demonstrated that elevating an issue differs from closing a gap. This new Commission must do both: elevate the issues and drive the policy action required. AI continues to evolve, new risks emerge and gaps widen. The practical question is whether forty members, meeting in Geneva, can move fast enough to matter for the youth whose futures depend on it.