Words / Writing
Ideas should survive contact with capital
Artificial intelligence, investment, institutions, trade and economic competitiveness — through the lens of Africa and emerging markets.
Words / Writing
Artificial intelligence, investment, institutions, trade and economic competitiveness — through the lens of Africa and emerging markets.
AI, investment, institutions and trade, through the lens of Africa. The test is always the same: real demand, financeable, governable, scalable.
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The question is no longer awareness. It is turning momentum into adoption, companies and measurable advantage.
This series examines the transition from AI ambition to capability: why strategy is only a means, why ecosystems determine whether promising companies can scale, and why Africa ultimately needs a credible way to measure AI competitiveness.
The most urgent AI opportunity may not be a chatbot, but the intelligence that helps companies trade across borders.
Anchored in the realities of African trade and the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Area, this series examines how data and artificial intelligence could help transform continental integration from policy architecture into everyday commercial capability.
Can promising ventures become investable companies that win customers and scale beyond pilots?
This series examines the problem from three connected perspectives: what the market must now demand, what founders must prove and why institutions matter in reducing the cost of trust and creating the conditions in which capable companies can grow.
As AI enters healthcare, data becomes a strategic asset. Who sets the terms?
Africa should neither isolate its health data nor surrender access without clear terms. This series moves from the immediate data debate to the deeper questions of governance, institutional capacity and how African countries can build strategic leverage within an unequal global technology system.
Written during the World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings: financing Africa’s AI economy beyond sovereign borrowing.
The argument moves from capital structures to ecosystem building and then to the practical realities of what is working, what is not and what must change. AI ecosystems are not created by financing infrastructure in isolation. They emerge when demand, capable companies, appropriate capital, institutions and markets reinforce one another.
Standalone essays on where Africa’s advantages lie in the AI economy.
The same arguments, tested in conversation with investors, founders, policymakers and journalists.
Shorter notes and responses to current developments, on the same themes.