State of AI in Africa: A Visual Report for June 2025
From Ambition to Action
June 2025 marked a pivotal month where high-level strategy began crystallizing into tangible investment, policy, and ecosystem-building. While internal momentum grows, a vast global resource gap looms.
Raised by African startups in the first 5 months of 2025.
Year-on-year funding increase, signaling strong recovery.
AI practitioners needed to meet the continent’s talent goals.
The Investment Landscape: A Story of Duality
Capital flows reveal a pragmatic focus on solving core economic problems, yet highlight a sobering gap compared to the global stage.
The Global Funding Gap
Africa’s cumulative AI startup funding over five years is dwarfed by single funding rounds for major US companies, underscoring the need for sovereign innovation.
The “Big Four” Dominate
Investment remains concentrated, with Egypt, South Africa, Nigeria, and Kenya attracting 84% of all funding raised in early 2025.
Regional Spotlight: Nigeria’s Coordinated Push
Nigeria has emerged as a hyperactive hub, executing its National AI Strategy through major public-private partnerships and leveraging its deep talent pool.
A Multi-Pronged Partnership Strategy
The government is acting as a central coordinator, launching complementary initiatives to scale mature solutions and foster early-stage innovation simultaneously.
Dominance in the Google Accelerator
Nigeria’s ecosystem strength is evident in its representation in the latest Google for Startups cohort, the largest from any single country.
Ecosystem Deep Dive: Where is Innovation Focused?
An analysis of the Google Accelerator cohort reveals a pragmatic focus on applying AI to Africa’s foundational economic sectors.
Google Accelerator Class 9 by Sector
The 15 selected startups are tackling high-friction problems in core industries, with a notable rise in “picks and shovels” developer tools.
Building an AI-Ready Africa
A clear consensus has emerged among policymakers and tech leaders on the three foundational pillars required to unlock the continent’s AI potential.
Human Capital
Equipping Africa’s young, growing workforce with AI literacy and professional expertise, from grassroots clubs to PhD-level research.
Data Infrastructure
Building the digital backbone for connectivity, compute, and storage, with a strategic focus on sovereign, local data centers.
Localized Data
Training AI on African languages, cultures, and contexts to solve local problems and avoid dependency on foreign models.
Overcoming Foundational Roadblocks
While opportunities are vast, scaling AI across the continent requires addressing five critical, interconnected challenges.
Limited Infrastructure
Scarcity of compute resources, unreliable power, and few regional cloud data centers outside South Africa.
Scarcity of Skilled Professionals
A massive gap between the demand for AI skills and the output of current educational pipelines.
Regulatory Uncertainty
A fragmented and evolving governance landscape creates complexity for businesses and investors.
Managing AI Risks
High risk of algorithmic bias due to underrepresentation of African data in global training sets.
Data Availability & Quality
A lack of high-quality, structured, and localized digital data needed to train relevant and accurate AI models.
