Africa’s digital infrastructure debate is shifting from basic connectivity to a more complex phase centred on compute capacity, policy alignment and institutional readiness.
Two upcoming editions of Africa Hyperscalers Conversations – a global view will examine this transition, featuring Guy Zibi and Bright Simons in separate sessions.
The discussions come amid a surge in global investment in digital infrastructure, with hyperscalers committing significant capital to cloud regions, AI-ready data centres and interconnection platforms, while governments increasingly classify such assets as strategic.
Although Africa has recorded strong gains in connectivity over the past decade—driven by new subsea cables, expanded fibre networks and rising mobile broadband use—local capacity to process and host digital activity remains limited.
Operational data centre infrastructure is still concentrated in a few markets, notably South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Morocco and Egypt, leaving much of the continent dependent on external compute resources.
Against this backdrop, policymakers, investors and operators are increasingly focused on whether Africa can build the regulatory, institutional and infrastructure frameworks needed to retain value from its growing digital economy.
Mr. Zibi, Managing Partner at Xalam Analytics, is expected to provide insights into telecom market dynamics, infrastructure investment cycles and hyperscale deployment trends. His firm specialises in frontier-market research covering connectivity, cloud economics and fibre strategy.
Mr. Simons, President of mPedigree and Vice-President of Research at IMANI Centre for Policy and Education, will focus on governance, digital sovereignty and institutional design. His work spans technology-enabled supply chain systems and policy advisory roles on global platforms, including the World Economic Forum.
The sessions are expected to address key issues such as investor decision-making criteria, evolving infrastructure market trends and the policy measures required to strengthen execution capacity across African economies.
As artificial intelligence and cloud computing reshape global competitiveness, analysts say Africa’s ability to align policy, capital and infrastructure development will determine whether it emerges as a producer of digital systems or remains primarily a consumer.
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