Four technology companies from around the world have joined forces to launch AfricAI, a strategic joint venture aimed at advancing sovereign artificial intelligence (AI) and digital infrastructure across Africa. The agreement, signed on 18 August in Lagos, brings together Lakeba Group from Australia, Next Digital from Nigeria, AqlanX from the United Arab Emirates, and Agentic Dynamic from the Netherlands.
The collaboration is designed to localise, deploy, and commercialise enterprise-grade AI solutions tailored specifically to African markets. Nigeria will serve as the starting point, with the joint venture set to leverage national data centres and edge infrastructure to deliver AI applications in areas such as healthcare, digital identity, document automation, public administration, and enterprise services.
The founding partners said, “We are bringing together four complementary pillars—global IP, regional expertise, deployment excellence, and next-gen agentic AI architecture—to create an AI foundation that reflects African realities.” They emphasised that AfricAI’s mission is to develop AI “within Africa, by Africa, for Africa.”
Building a continental AI network
AfricAI’s long-term vision is to establish a distributed and interoperable AI network across the continent. The initiative will focus on building trusted and transparent AI ecosystems with localised applications in agriculture, urban planning, public services, and education. The goal is to empower African governments, enterprises, and communities with AI solutions developed in line with regional needs.
By 2026, the joint venture plans to expand into Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Rwanda. The partners also intend to train more than 100 regional AI professionals and ensure that data, deployment, and decision-making processes remain within Africa.
Key objectives and use cases
AfricAI will work to develop sovereign AI applications that address market-specific requirements while embedding compliance and multilingual support at every level. Its goals include integrating modular, agent-based AI architecture for adaptive and explainable systems, strengthening regional sovereignty through secure and compliant infrastructure, and establishing a Centre of Excellence to cultivate local talent in AI development, cybersecurity, and ethical deployment.
Several priority use cases have already been outlined. These include sovereign AI for digital identity and compliance, knowledge automation for government and enterprise documents, modular AI assistants for human resources and policy planning, and multilingual AI services in Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, and Pidgin to improve healthcare and citizen support. Secure transaction validation and infrastructure-aware AI for real-time monitoring and resilience will also be part of the deployment strategy.
Partner perspectives
Prince Malik Ado-Ibrahim, Chairman of Next Digital, said: “At Next Digital, we’re not just deploying AI — we’re shaping it to reflect who we are as Nigerians and Africans. AfricAI is about more than software. It’s about exporting our intelligence, building our future on our terms, and making Africa a force in the global AI conversation. Nigeria will lead that movement — and we are ready.”
Giuseppe Porcelli, CEO of Lakeba Group, described the project as a significant step forward. “Lakeba has long been at the forefront of global AI innovation. AfricAI marks a bold next step — not just for Lakeba, but for the future of sovereign AI. Nigeria offers the ideal launchpad for building a truly African AI ecosystem. With our flagship DoxAI platform and deep capabilities in cybersecurity, automation, and orchestration, we are proud to architect the AI infrastructure Africa needs and deserves.”
Demetrio Russo, Founder and CEO of AqlanX, added: “Localization, multilingual compliance, and digital trust are core to our AI philosophy. AfricAI reflects a strategic intent by AqlanX to help shape Africa’s digital sovereignty agenda while enabling secure, AI-first innovation ecosystems built for scale, ethics, and inclusion.”
Eren Sivasli, Chairman of Agentic Dynamic, said: “We believe in scalable, domain-specific automation that truly supports human workflows. That’s why we’re excited to bring Agentic Dynamic’s segment-oriented agent architecture into this multinational collaboration.”
With its focus on sovereignty, scalability, and inclusivity, AfricAI aims to make Africa not only a user of AI but also a leading developer of context-aware and sustainable AI systems.
