Africa could capture up to $136 billion in AI productivity gains, says Microsoft Africa Exec
Africa could capture up to $136 billion in AI productivity gains, but only if governments allow secure cross-border data flows, a Microsoft Africa executive told TechCabal.
Reporting from TechCabal quotes Akua Gyekye, Microsoft Africa’s government affairs director, tying the estimate to two constraints that sit below most AI headlines. Africa holds about 1% to 2% of global compute, and it also sits inside a tightening, country-by-country compliance perimeter that can block regional scale.
Compute scarcity shifts bargaining power to hyperscalers
Africa has 223 data centres across 38 countries as of mid-2025, under 0.02% of the world’s more than 11,800 facilities. African governments have asked global cloud providers to build local capacity, yet the distribution problem persists because AI workloads concentrate in large, capital-heavy regions.
Microsoft launched its first large-scale African cloud regions in 2019, organized as South Africa North in Johannesburg and South Africa West in Cape Town. Gyekye argued that a national-by-national buildout can fail basic economics, because a regional design lets one cluster serve multiple markets.
Data law has expanded faster than cross-border interoperability
Africa moved from 12 countries with data-protection laws in 2012 to at least 46 with legislation or regulatory frameworks today, with more than 40 Data Protection Authorities. The African Union Convention on Cyber Security and Personal Data Protection entered into force in 2023 and accelerated alignment.
Enforcement has intensified. Nigeria’s FCCPC and Nigeria Data Protection Commission fined Meta $220 million in July 2024. Kenya’s ODPC fined several digital lenders in late 2023 and again in 2025 between KES 2 million and KES 5 million for contacting borrowers’ phone contacts.
Sovereign cloud reframes “where data sits” into “who holds keys”
Microsoft is advocating a sovereign cloud approach that lets data reside outside a country while remaining under that country’s laws through encryption, local key management, access controls, and contracts. Gyekye framed the control point as key custody, where the customer or government holds keys rather than Microsoft.
Constraints extend beyond policy. Microsoft cites 117 million Africans connected to broadband via Airband and launched expanded AI capabilities in 39 African languages through Paza on Feb. 4, 2026. U.S. legal reach also remains a structural factor, since the CLOUD Act can compel U.S.-based firms to produce data they control, even if stored abroad.
