Africa is no stranger to being at the mercy of the Western world. From mining its own resources to building its cities, most African countries have long depended on foreign help. However, this was not always the case before the scramble for Africa, which raises the question: how did we get here? After decades of independence, and in this technologically driven world, Africa still relies heavily on Western help.

With data now the most important resource, Africa must free itself from dependency and own its share in the digital space.

The Numbers

According to Visual Capitalist, an estimated 74% of the world’s population, about six billion people, is now online. Of this number, Africa’s percentage is merely 20%, with Nigeria, South Africa, and Egypt being the countries with the most internet users on the continent.

With these numbers from Africa, the question remains: on what foundation does the teeming population of African internet users stand? A borrowed one, or one built by Africans?

Foreign Investments, Local Consequences

For the most part, investments by the United States and China have improved connectivity and access for Africans. However, they have also deepened Africa’s dependence on external help.

Undersea cables, cloud servers, and content networks are all owned by foreign players, meaning the data that fuels Africa’s digital economy is stored and monetised elsewhere. This raises concerns about data exploitation and surveillance, and what this means for the continent’s independence.

To be fair, progress has been made. Across Kenya, Nigeria, Angola, South Africa, Morocco, Libya, Ghana, Rwanda, and Senegal, digital capabilities are expanding.

Africa’s international bandwidth has improved, outperforming Asia and Latin America, while fibre networks are expanding and new data centres are emerging.

According to the African Union Development Agency, the number of African Union member states with national digital policies and innovation hubs has seen a significant increase, from 25% to 41%. The AU’s Digital Transformation Strategy (2020–2030) also outlines a vision for an integrated digital economy. Still, four years from 2030, progress has been slow, and the risk of dependency is already being seen online.

How Algorithms Shape Perception

Algorithms designed by foreign companies determine what millions of Africans see, shaping perception, conversation, and even aspiration.

Recently, African users, especially on X (formerly Twitter), have voiced growing concerns about social media platforms being flooded with low-quality content that fuels emotions over intellect.

The conversation gained traction after a video by @Spearhead_Af went viral, garnering more than 300,000 views. In the video, the creators argued that the algorithm is being tilted to show less intellectually stimulating content to Africans.

Several users echoed this sentiment in their responses to the post, sharing frustration about the kind of content that dominates their feeds:

MethoDman@polo_kimanii: “For a while now, I have noticed a pattern in my algorithm. There’s so much non-African intellectual content being pushed on my timelines, not just X. The only intellectual conversations reaching me are American, which are of no use to me. The only African content reaching me is basic nonsense that is less impactful to my brain…”

Biggest Mack@Big_Mck: “This is what happens when imperialist powers control your digital media space. They not only engineer what the audience sees, but they also dictate what creators do to make money…”

ZAYNBXT@Z4YNXBT: “I always wondered this. I see only poor African content — no intellectual discussions and recurring delusions from several sources, comedy and humour… as if the entire continent is a large circus meant to entertain the rest of the world.”

While there is no definitive proof of intentional bias, the effect is clear: the online experience of African users often feels less enriching.

The inequalities also reflect in creator economics. When social media platforms began paying creators, discrimination was seen. African creators earn a fraction of what their Western counterparts do, despite comparable engagement and impression levels.

A Nigerian senator, Senator Natasha Akpoti-Uduaghan, raised this point on the floor of the National Assembly in December 2025, while debating the necessity for stronger regulatory engagements with these global firms to protect the income of creators.

These disparities go beyond earnings and also reinforce a digital hierarchy where Africa remains the consumer. In this era of artificial intelligence, these stereotypes can be seen not just in movies, media, or papers, but in AI tools.

Bias in Artificial Intelligence

One might expect that the advances being made by Africa in different sectors as a whole would finally reshape old narratives. Yet, these stereotypes persist and are being amplified by AI tools.

According to a recent study by the German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), 2% of the data used to train global AI models comes from Africa. This means these tools rarely reflect African voices or experiences and default to outdated clichés.

In 2025, a media advocacy group, Africa No Filter, tested leading AI chatbots — ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and Claude — by asking what they each knew about Africa. The responses were about poverty, instability, and disease.

Founder Moky Makura noted that these biases reflect the “under-representation on digital platforms of African data, which is a direct outcome of limited infrastructure and slow digitisation progress.”

The digital bias does not just stop at perception or stereotypes, but can also be seen in how Africans are treated by global platforms in practice. A good example is PayPal’s long exclusion of Nigeria from its service.

The PayPal Illustration

In late January 2026, Paga announced a partnership with PayPal, signalling the return of PayPal’s full service to Nigeria, and this elicited loud pushback and criticism online.

PayPal had blacklisted the country for nearly two decades due to fraud concerns. It did, however, allow payments to leave the country but blocked the important function of receiving money, a decision many saw as a form of digital stigmatisation that branded an entire nation as untrustworthy.

Yet this exclusion, though painful, spurred innovation. Nigerian founders worked rigorously and tirelessly, lobbying for policies, attracting investors, and building solutions for entrepreneurs shut out of the global system.

The rise of Grey Finance, LemFi, Flutterwave, Paga, and Paystack not only bridged the gap but also showed that Africans could build systems to solve their peculiar challenges.

Similar fintech revolutions in Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt show that with clear regulations, financial investments, and policy reforms, Africa can create world-class infrastructure.

These innovators not only bridged a functional gap but also challenged the narrative that Africans are mere users of technology and not architects.

Digital Colonialism

Nature abhors a vacuum, and in the absence of African-owned digital infrastructure, others have comfortably filled the gap.

Africa’s internet traffic flows through foreign property, making millions of users digital tenants, subject to the rules of the landlords who own the servers and cables. These owners, global tech giants, not only host the data but profit from it.

This is known as digital colonialism, and it mirrors historical patterns of extraction. Africa produces the raw material (data) while the value is refined and monetised elsewhere.

As communication scholars Nick Couldry and Ulises Mejias argue in The Costs of Connection (2019), data has become “the new raw material of capitalism,” and those who control its extraction control the future.

Data generated by millions of citizens across Africa, from social media activity to financial transactions, is stored in data centres located in Europe, the United States, or Asia.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development’s (UNCTAD) 2021 Digital Economy Report warned that this would create a “data dependency trap,” where developing regions like Africa generate vast amounts of digital value but capture very little of it.

Unfortunately, the continent accounts for less than 1% of the world’s total data centres. As of mid-2025, Africa has 223 data centres across 38 countries. South Africa has the most, with 56, followed by Kenya with 19 and Nigeria with 17.

This means 41% of Africa’s data centre infrastructure is concentrated in just these three countries, and Africa’s data is largely processed and monetised offshore. The profits return to Big Tech shareholders abroad, while innovation and security remain vulnerable in Africa.

Economic and Political Risks

Foreign companies like Google, Meta, and Amazon control the digital infrastructure that underpins African connectivity, from undersea cables to cloud services and advertising platforms. As a result, African businesses pay to access their own markets, funnelling revenue outwards in exchange for digital services.

As Nanjira Sambuli, a leading Kenyan digital policy analyst, puts it, “Africa risks becoming the world’s data mine, exporting raw information while importing digital products built from it.”

Politically, this dependence weakens sovereignty. Data stored outside Africa falls under foreign jurisdiction, which limits governments’ ability to fully protect their citizens’ privacy or enforce cybersecurity laws. Even with national data protection acts, such as Kenya’s Data Protection Act or Nigeria’s NDPR, enforcement is mostly toothless without local infrastructure.

In 2022, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) noted that without regional data centres, African governments face significant challenges in ensuring cybersecurity, privacy, and digital sovereignty.

This external dependence opens the continent to surveillance, manipulation, and interference, both corporate and geopolitical.

Beyond governance, there is the cultural dimension: who controls Africa’s narrative online? The algorithms designed in foreign contexts decide which African stories are amplified, which are suppressed, and how the world perceives the continent.

During Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict, for instance, Amnesty International reported in 2022 that Meta’s failure to moderate hate speech in local languages contributed to real-world violence. Ethiopians filed a lawsuit against Meta and alleged that the company used an algorithm that prioritises hateful content and responds more slowly to crises in Africa than elsewhere in the world.

This shows that digital colonialism not only extracts economic value but also controls narrative power, deciding who gets to speak and whose truth is seen as credible.

Fortunately, it is not all bleak. Africa has what it takes to change its future.

Building Africa’s Digital Future

African-owned digital infrastructure would mean a continental ecosystem built on African priorities and needs, powered by African talent, and protected by African governance. It must redefine ownership in both technical and ideological senses.

Building Africa’s digital infrastructure will take a village, not just a few stakeholders.

Everyday People

Africa has the world’s largest youth demographic, and this is its greatest asset. As Nigerian tech expert and analyst Olufemi Ariyo notes, “Every day people matter even more than institutions,” citing the young and vibrant population of Africa as an unmatched strategic advantage.

Governments and the private sector must invest in digital literacy, open-source communities, and innovation hubs for the young population to nurture this potential. Rwanda, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt are at the forefront of this.

Governments and Regional Bodies

African governments and regional organisations like the African Union (AU), Smart Africa, and AfCFTA’s Digital Trade Protocol will play a foundational role by setting policies that enable ownership and collaboration.

The AU Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020–2030) envisions a unified digital market and aims to support not only the continent’s socio-economic development but also to ensure Africa’s ownership of modern tools of digital management.

The Smart Africa Alliance is spearheading projects like the One Africa Network to enhance connectivity and reduce reliance on foreign gateways. More of these initiatives must be encouraged.

The AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol, adopted in 2024, needs to be implemented by countries, as it serves as a legal framework to facilitate digital trade in Africa. It also contains data governance-related obligations, including cross-border data flows, data localisation, and a provision on source code.

A truly African-owned digital ecosystem would feature continental cloud infrastructure, with data hosted within Africa under unified data protection laws. These would include regional data centres co-funded by member states and development banks, Public–private partnerships (PPPs) for broadband expansion and local cloud capacity as well as harmonised data protection laws to enable secure cross-border flows. It would also require Pan-African investment funds for tech infrastructure, similar to the African Development Bank’s energy model.

African nations must pool partnerships and resources to own African-owned satellites and data centres. It is important to note that ownership of digital infrastructure is an expensive venture; however, it can be achieved through the collective vision and determination of African states.

As Ghanaian essayist Fuseini Abdulai Braimah notes, “No single African country may afford a full satellite constellation or semiconductor plant, but Africa cannot collectively claim poverty. The obstacle is not money; it is vision, trust, and leadership.”

Private Sector Partnerships

Africa’s private sector has to be a part of this change. Fintech giants like Paystack, M-Pesa, Flutterwave, and others have already shown that African companies can build globally competitive infrastructure. The next frontier lies in African-owned cloud services, AI training platforms, and hardware manufacturing.

Leading companies should build partnerships with their host countries. Recently, Airtel Nigeria reaffirmed its commitment to strengthening Nigeria’s digital infrastructure while inspecting its ongoing Nxtra Data Centre at Eko Atlantic, Lagos.

The data centre would serve as a major hub for data hosting, cloud services, content distribution, artificial intelligence, and enterprise solutions in West Africa.

Investments like this must be replicated across Africa and encouraged by governments, with support such as tax incentives, an enabling environment, favourable policies, grants, and joint ventures with local firms.

Academia and Research Communities

Universities and research communities are crucial for producing the human capital needed to encourage digital sovereignty. There must be collaboration across regions to develop datasets and AI models that represent African needs, languages, culture, and priorities.

African states must invest in STEM education from early schooling, fund research programmes, and encourage educational initiatives.

Conclusion

Africans cannot afford to stand on the fringes of the global digital revolution, nor keep being at the mercy of systems built elsewhere. Africa must build and own the infrastructure that powers its digital future.

As China did to become a technology giant, Africa must focus on its digital future, cut through the noise, invest, and build infrastructure that works for its people, by its people. Only then can Africa truly be a sovereign continent, commanding respect, driving innovation, and shaping its own narrative in the digital era.