Nairobi, Aug. 31 -- The conversation today is no longer whether Africa will adopt AI, but if it can create the conditions to use it responsibly, confidently and at scale. That question is becoming more important as AI systems are increasingly embedded in how organisations work. At the heart of the shift is a question of trust: can an organisation gain from AI without surrendering control of the data, intellectual property and institutional intelligence that make it distinctive?

Microsoft's Global AI Diffusion Report for the first quarter of 2026 found generative AI usage among working-age populations at 27.5 percent in the global north compared with 15.4 percent in the south. For Africa, closing that gap is an economic imperative and a c...