Post by Hatem Dowidar

Yesterday in Johannesburg, I joined a panel at Bloomberg’s Africa Business Summit with Hassanein Hiridjee, Alex Okosi and Genevieve Sangudi for a discussion moderated by Lizzy Burden on both the progress and the pressure points in Africa's digital landscape. Infrastructure gaps remain Africa’s major barrier. They affect whether emerging technologies like AI will close or widen inequality. Much of the data shaping global AI systems does not represent African contexts, so the next phase of growth depends on connecting the continent and building locally grounded digital foundations backed by regulation that reflects local realities, policies, and the fiscal environment to spur long-term investments. But those gaps are also Africa’s biggest catalyst for innovation. Challenges like unreliable electricity and irregular policies are real, yet they also open new investment corridors. With a median age of 19 and markets that build solutions under constraints most economies can’t imagine, Africa has always been a testbed for practical ingenuity. And the continent’s AI equation is fundamentally different from that of mature economies: the potential gains far outweigh the job displacement risks that dominate labour markets in established knowledge economies. What Africa needs now is infrastructure, connectivity, investment muscle, and regulatory foresight to match its ambitions and capture the young continent’s untapped potential. Because once you connect the people, you can enrich their digital lives. #AfricaBusinessSummit #Johannesburg #eAnd #Bloomberg