Digital infrastructure development dominates Africa’s policy priorities: Carnegie Brief

A brief released by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has disclosed that the development of digital infrastructure has been on top of the priority list of many African governments for at least the past 30 years.

This fact is supported by more than 1,000 data points pulled together from Carnegie’s Africa Technology Policy Tracker (AfTech), a database of technology laws, policies, and regulations across all 55 African countries as well as the African Union, according to the brief published recently.

Per the publication, 90 percent of all regulatory documents pooled into the AfTech database involve digital infrastructure, with 57 percent of them focused on it exclusively.

Most of the infrastructure, the brief states, has to do with connectivity which has been described as the foundation upon which any country’s digital economy and digital transformation relies. Also, the other three pillars that were tracked, namely digital platforms, innovation, and skills, were found to always be accompanied by infrastructure, which means that African governments see them as inter-dependent.

Another finding of the brief is that over time, there has been a substantial evolution in how African countries define digital infrastructure. That definition has moved from physical aspects like subsea cables that enable digital connectivity, to now include trust systems and intangible things like digital ID, digital payments and data exchange.

In another major result of the research, the brief finds a huge gap between the availability of digital infrastructure and access to them. For example, it advances statistics which indicate that only an estimated 36 percent of Africans use the internet, despite about 80 percent of them being within reach of a broadband internet connection.

“Infrastructure must not only be built but also be affordable. Policy must encompass last-mile initiatives that expand access and seek to reduce costs,” the brief recommends.

From 2021 upwards, one notable thing in Africa’s digital infrastructure development policy has been the shift towards a data-centric and AI-ready model. The brief argues that this is among the most consequential developments in Africa’s digital policy landscape, as data governance now presses directly onto infrastructure itself, defining the terms of engagement for investors and partners. As the analysis shows, digital infrastructure, data governance and AI integration are no longer separable, and anyone seeking to invest in Africa’s digital future must take note of that.

As a way forward, the brief outlines three policy imperatives which African countries and their partners must engage as they pursue efforts to fully embrace the AI era and boost their digital transformation. The first is that while countries continue to make connectivity a priority and ensure that the unconnected go online, it is extremely vital to build partnerships that go beyond this, and engage in building full digital stacks.

The second imperative is directed at global institutions. The brief calls on multilateral bodies such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the World Bank, and the World Economic Forum to ensure that the foundational challenge of connecting the unconnected is not crowded out by the global conversation around AI and frontier technologies.

Another point is that while nations look at their national-level realities, they must also look towards continent-level analysis in order to better understand certain patterns that may appear invisible when looked at from a national lens.

Carnegie releases regular reports on the state of digital ID development and DPI in different parts of the world. Last November, one of its reports looked at the fragile efforts at developing digital ID in Pacific Island Countries.

Article Topics

Africa  |  African Union  |  Carnegie Mellon University Africa (CMU-Africa)  |  digital ID infrastructure  |  digital public infrastructure