Recent ODA cuts have underscored the precariousness of many African countries’ fiscal models. Forty-two out of Africa’s fifty-four countries rely on ODA for more than ten per cent of their government revenues[1]. Declining aid flows are exposing the structural limits of development models overly dependent on external financing, revealing deep imbalances between public resources and development needs, compounded by debt vulnerabilities and constrained fiscal space. This context reinforces the urgency of advancing development pathways anchored in domestic resource mobilisation, productive investment, deeper regional integration, and structural transformation, in line with Africa’s ambition for inclusive growth, shared prosperity, and self-reliance.
Discussions highlighted three potential catalytic investment pathways for Africa’s development: critical minerals, DPI, and AI, each offering the potential to catalyse broader development ecosystems across the continent.
1. Critical minerals. Africa holds an estimated 30 per cent of the world’s proven critical mineral reserves yet captures only a small fraction of the value generated from their extraction. Of the total value created from the exploitation of Africa’s minerals, only 15 per cent is retained within the continent.[2] This structural gap reflects the continent’s continued position as a supplier of raw or minimally processed materials rather than a participant in the higher value stages of global supply chains. The disparity is illustrated by the processing differential: raw bauxite commands only a small fraction of the value of refined aluminium, with prices of roughly $70–90 per ton compared to $3,400–3,600 per ton in Q1 2026[3], while cobalt exported in processed form from the Democratic Republic of the Congo demonstrates the transformative revenue potential of even partial value addition. By refining and processing cobalt domestically, the DRC was able to increase the mineral’s unit value from around USD 5.8 per kilogramme at the time of extraction to approximately USD 16.2 per kilogramme after basic processing.[4]
Demand for these minerals is expected to surge. Projections by the International Energy Agency indicate that demand for lithium, cobalt, and other battery metals could increase several-fold by 2040–2050, driven by the global energy transition and the rapid scaling of clean energy technologies. Realising this opportunity will require not only investment in extraction, but a deliberate shift toward African-defined understandings of criticality, grounded in which minerals are strategic for the continent’s own industrialisation and development priorities, rather than solely those demanded by external markets. It will also require greater investment in national and regional value-added chains to ensure that critical minerals support Africa’s industrial development and maximise the value retained from exports. This includes strengthening regional market integration and value chains through coordinated industrial policies, targeted infrastructure corridors, and harmonised standards to enable processing, refining and manufacturing to take place across multiple African economies. It also implies leveraging tools such as local content frameworks, strategic public–private partnerships, and blended finance to generate investment and build the capabilities required for higher value production at scale.
2. Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI). Over 500 million Africans lack any form of official identification, restricting access to services, finance and formal employment, while approximately 80–85 percent of the continent’s workforce operates in the informal economy.[5] Well-designed digital systems can have catalytic development impacts by supporting the formalisation of informal economic activity, lowering barriers to entry, and improving access to services and markets. However, limited access to affordable and reliable connectivity remains a binding constraint in many parts of Africa, with low internet penetration — approximately 36 percent in 2025 —continuing to restrict the reach and impact of digital transformation.[6]
Expanding inclusive and affordable connectivity must, therefore, be a priority for national governments. Discussions underscored that DPI initiatives should prioritise simplicity, usability, and public value. Lessons from India’s experience illustrate these principles. India’s most successful DPI components, such as Aadhaar, now covering more than 1.33 billion people, over 95 percent of the population, and the Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which processes more than 20–21 billion transactions per month as of January 2026, scaled not because they were complex, but because they were designed to be lightweight, interoperable, and accessible to ordinary users, including through offline and feature-phone channels. Stakeholders emphasised that new software or increasingly sophisticated technologies are not always the solution; what matters is a clear and minimal core that different sectors can build upon and reuse. Effective DPI should therefore focus on interoperable, fit-for-purpose systems that reduce transaction costs, expand access, and build public trust. Technologies that are not safe, inclusive, and trusted should not be deployed.
Priority was also placed on developing shared continental and regional standards for data governance, digital identity, payments, and DPI interoperability that respect national contexts while enabling scale. India’s Data Empowerment and Protection Architecture (DEPA), with standardised consent artefacts and regulated consent managers (Account Aggregators), was highlighted as a simple, user-controlled model for consent-based data sharing that could inform African pathways. Ensuring African ownership and governance of data was identified as critical to safeguarding sovereignty, strengthening accountability, and enabling value creation.
3. Artificial Intelligence (AI). AI has substantial potential to accelerate Africa’s development through higher productivity, improved service delivery, and rapid, large-scale knowledge diffusion. If deployed inclusively, it could add up to $1 trillion to GDP by 2035 — roughly one-third of the continent’s current economic output.[7] These gains would be driven in part by AI-enabled leapfrogging across key sectors, including education, healthcare, agriculture, and public administration. However, AI support for African languages is still highly uneven. A 2025 review of large and small language models found that, out of more than 2,000 African languages, only an estimated 42 were supported across the models surveyed, with coverage concentrated in a small number of languages such as Amharic, Swahili, Afrikaans, and Malagasy. As a result, the vast majority (98 per cent) remain effectively unsupported within current mainstream model ecosystems[8]. This underscores the importance of ensuring AI systems are accessible in African languages.
There are also emerging resource and sustainability considerations. Global modelling by the International Energy Agency (IEA) projects that data centre electricity demand could more than double to around 945 TWh by 2030, driven in part by increasing workloads from AI and related services[9]. Data centres also have significant water demands for cooling and related processes, including both direct use in cooling systems and indirect water use via electricity generation. This is particularly problematic for Africa, where water stress is already high or rising in several regions, meaning that poorly planned expansion of digital infrastructure could intensify competition for scarce freshwater resources and heighten local distributional tensions.
Overall, there was broad consensus that Africa must define and pursue its own AI development pathway, one that harnesses the technology’s transformative potential while aligning with the continent’s development priorities, governance frameworks, and resource realities. However, only a small number of countries have adopted national AI strategies, with many others still in development.[10] This underscores the need to move beyond passive consumption toward more strategic adoption, local innovation, and ownership. It also requires proactive attention to emerging governance risks, including data sovereignty, labour conditions in AI-related digital work, and the risk of deepening technological dependency within global ecosystems[11].
[1] McKinsey & Company. (2026). ‘From borrowing to building’.
[2] African Peer Review Mechanism. (2025). ‘Africa Governance Report 2025: Natural Resource Governance in Africa’.
[3] IMARC Group. (2026). ‘Bauxite Pricing Report’; and World Bank. (2026). ‘Commodity Markets Outlook / Pink Sheet Data (Aluminum)’.
[4] African Development Bank Group. (2023). ‘Critical Minerals for Africa’s Inclusive Growth and Development’.
[5] World Bank. (2022). ‘Identification for Development (ID4D) Global Dataset’; International Labour Organization (ILO). (2018). ‘Women and Men in the Informal Economy: A Statistical Picture, 3rd ed’.
[6] International Telecommunication Union. (2025). ‘Facts and Figures 2025: Internet Use’.
[7] African Development Bank. (2025). ‘Africa’s AI Productivity Gain: Pathways to Labour Efficiency, Economic Growth and Inclusive Transformation ‘.
[8] Abdelali, A. et al. (2025). A Survey of Large Language Models for African Languages’.
[9] International Energy Agency (IEA). (2024). ‘Energy and AI’.
[10] United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). ‘2023–2026 policy reports on digital transformation and AI’.
[11] See also, Wilton Park. (2025, January). ‘Successfully Harnessing AI in Africa’. https://www.wiltonpark.org.uk/reports/successfully-harnessing-ai-in-africa/