Each morning, as American programmers are still brewing their first cup of coffee, employees at Qhala, a Nairobi-based digital technology company, are racing to finish the day’s tasks. The company is busy training the next generation of large language models on some of Africa’s 2,000 languages, but they keep running into a familiar problem: a lack of computing power.

The African continent has fewer than 250 data centers to power one-fifth of the world’s population while the United States alone has over 5,000 and counting. Companies like Qhala are often relegated to renting power from data centers thousands of miles away and complete their work before the traffic increases and data transfer speeds slow.

Throughout human history, technological waves have shaped how society lives, works and interacts. The First and Second Industrial Revolutions, and later the digital and mobile waves, transformed society over years and decades, but the AI transformation is reshaping our world even faster. For Africa, in particular, AI has the potential to boost health and development outcomes. Diseases like AIDS that were once death sentences may soon no longer be threats. Millions of people living in poverty could soon have a better quality of life. But whether this optimistic future includes Africa depends on more investment, local involvement and integration in the burgeoning AI race.

Undernutrition is responsible for nearly half of all child deaths today, and most of them are concentrated in low and middle-income countries. Over the past two decades, we have seen game-changing innovations and learnings, from treating infants’ microbiomes to the use of bouillon cubes to address micronutrient deficiencies. AI holds even greater promise in fighting undernutrition by increasing agricultural yields and detecting devastating pest infestations before crops are killed. Innovations across Africa and India are already helping farmers decide where to apply pesticides, which fertilizers to use, and when to water for maximum impact. Once harvested, AI helps improve food storage and delivery, further reducing waste. A recent study published in the Journal of Stored Products Research found that AI-driven cold storage can reduce post-harvest spoilage by up to 60%.

AI also has the potential to address another pressing health challenge: Africa’s large doctor shortage. Despite carrying a quarter of the world’s disease burden, the continent has just 3% of the global healthcare workforce. In sub-Saharan Africa, there is roughly one doctor for every 5,000 people compared to the United States which averages roughly one doctor for every 333 people. This labor shortage also extends to other areas like midwives and community health workers, which have faced steep cuts following the dismantling of the U.S. Agency For International Development (USAID).

AI has the potential to close this growing gap. Chatbots are helping patients access telehealth services, giving them more knowledge than ever before. Medical visits are more efficient with automated scheduling, data entry and transcription, enabling doctors to focus more on their patients. And AI imaging advancements in x-rays and ultrasounds are detecting tuberculosis and high-risk pregnancies with surprising accuracy. Together, these tools can and will save and improve millions of lives, but only if they reach those who need them most.

Africa has made significant technological progress in recent decades. While the continent still faces plenty of innovation challenges, the Western stereotype of an Africa stuck in the Stone Age is not only tired—it’s false. Mobile data usage on the continent is growing at double the global average. The rise in mobile has birthed millions of new mobile money accounts. Today, over 70% of global mobile money transactions occur on the continent. And while the percentage of internet users still lags the global average, between 2000 and 2023, the number of people with web access increased from 5 million to over 550 million.

AI is ushering in a new set of challenges. Compute power is capital-intensive and a large data center can cost upwards of $300 million. Africa has just 1% of the world’s data center capacity and according to Bright Simons, the co-founder of the Accra-based Imani Centre for Policy and Education, Africans account for less than 0.5% of machine learning and large-language models.

“We’re already starting out at a much lower base compared to the rest of the world. The AI leapfrogging theory completely dissolves, because in AI you’re already marginalised,” he told the Financial Times last fall.

Experts also warn that AI systems could reinforce biases that marginalize Africa. As large-language models grow in strength, their inputs become increasingly important. According to the UN agency for digital technologies, of the top 34 languages used on the Internet globally, none are African.

More domestic and international investment is slowly mobilizing. In March, Microsoft announced a nearly $300 million commitment to expand its AI and cloud infrastructure in South Africa by 2027. Companies like Amazon Web Services, Oracle, Equinix and many others have made significant investments in cloud infrastructure, compute and data centers across the continent, which could lead to new, high-paying jobs.

Last month, philanthropist Bill Gates addressed the African Union where he announced the Gates Foundation (Disclosure: (RED) the organization that I lead is a Gates Foundation grantee) will commit a majority of its $200 billion spend over the next two decades to Africa to accelerate health progress through innovation. “Africa largely skipped traditional banking and now you have a chance, as you build your next generation healthcare systems, to think about how AI is built into that,” he said.

This summer, Cassava Technologies, the company founded by a Zimbabwean billionaire, Strive Masiyiwa, will open a massive data center in South Africa with the hopes of building four additional AI hubs across Egypt, Kenya, Morocco, and Nigeria. These projects are desperately needed but are only expected to ease up to 20% of the local compute demand.

“I don’t think Africa can afford to outsource this A.I. sovereignty to others,” said Hardy Pemhiwa, Cassava’s chief executive, told the New York Times recently. “We absolutely have to focus on and ensure that we don’t get left behind.”

In April, 2,000 delegates converged for a multi-day Global AI Summit for Africa, which could be a turning point for Africa’s AI future. A commitment of $60 billion was made by public, private, and philanthropic sector donors to boost the continent’s AI capacity. At the gathering, Rwandan President Paul Kagame echoed the call for more AI investment to ensure Africa catches the AI wave.

"We have to adapt, cooperate and compete because it is in our best interest to do so," Rwandan President Paul Kagame said at the gathering. “The potential for innovation and creativity on our continent is immense. That is already a comparative advantage which artificial intelligence can multiply.”