Africa Data Fellowship Series

Africa’s digital transformation is accelerating, reshaping how citizens learn, work, communicate, and access public services. AI applications are increasingly being deployed to address pressing development challenges, from predictive analytics in health and agriculture to automated financial services, digital identity systems, and smart education platforms. Initiatives such as the African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy (2020–2030), Agenda 2063, and the Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy (2024 2034) underscore Africa’s collective commitment to harnessing emerging technologies for inclusive, sustainable, and sovereign digital growth. Together, these frameworks signal a regional shift toward coordinated AI governance but also expose a critical gap: the limited integration of gender perspectives within the continent’s AI roadmap.

In East Africa, much of the value generated from data produced by citizens, firms, and governments flows outward. Foreign companies and donor led systems dominate the region's digital and data infrastructure, storing, processing, and monetising this data. The result is a modern form of dependence in which the region supplies raw data while others capture the profits and strategic advantages derived from it. This issue is not simply a technological challenge but an economic and governance problem. When data on payments, agriculture, health, and education is hosted and analysed abroad, East African states lose opportunities to create jobs, tax revenue, and innovation capacity. They also lose visibility over their economies, compromising security and evidence-based policymaking.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is undergoing a gradual yet visible digital transformation in education. A landmark step occurred in 2025, when the Ministry of Primary, Secondary and Technical Education deployed Artificial Intelligence (AI) solutions to grade the Examen d’État, the national  secondary school examination . While this reform improved efficiency and reduced manual errors, it raised urgent governance questions: How are student data protected? Who ensures algorithmic fairness? And what safeguards exist against bias or misuse?

Ethiopia’s agricultural sector remains the backbone of the economy, contributing over 30% of GDP and employing around 65% of the workforce, yet it faces a persistent financing shortfall. The constraint goes beyond just the shortage of capital. A major constraint to accessing finance is the absence of verified, structured, and interoperable data that would enable financial institutions to lend confidently and design risk-based financial products. Ethiopia's agricultural financing gap is estimated at 2.5 trillion Billion annually, with financial institutions meeting only about 2% of this need.
Without trusted data, farmers remain invisible to lenders, and formal financial systems cannot scale agricultural credit or insurance. This threatens the delivery of the National Agricultural Finance Implementation Roadmap (NAFIR) 2025 - 2030, risking a failure to mobilise over 60% of the targeted financing for agricultural transformation.

Nigeria's digital governance journey reflects bold ambition meeting incomplete execution. Internet penetration reached close to half the population in 2024[1]. The National Information Technology Development Agency’s (NITDA) Strategic Roadmap (2021–2024) seeded hundreds of digital centres across the federation,[2] and the National e-Government Master Plan targets 75% digitisation of public services by 2027 , while the Nigeria Data Protection Act (2023) established an independent
commission to safeguard privacy and govern data use