Oluniyi D. Ajao

Five African governments have put their names to a continental push to build artificial intelligence that works in African languages, alongside a ministerial declaration committing them to a common approach on connectivity policy.

Africa Tech Festival has named the first speakers for its 29th edition, and the list is weighted towards the people writing the cheques for Africa’s AI and data centre build-out rather than the people theorising about it.

CDN77, a global content delivery network, has joined the Johannesburg Internet Exchange, four years after it began peering at NAPAfrica in the same city. It is one of several networks that already had an African presence and have spent 2026 adding a second or third exchange rather than a first.

Liquid Intelligent Technologies has spent two years quietly replacing parts of its Lagos delivery network with beams of light. It now runs nearly a dozen links across the city that carry data through the air rather than through buried fibre.

A satellite user terminal. ICASA’s draft amendments cover authorisation procedures for satellite terminals and Earth Stations in Motion. Image: Bernd Dittrich / Unsplash

Truecaller’s Call-to-Cart aims to turn the moments around a phone call into mobile purchases. Image: Pexels / Kampus Production.

At a Wits roundtable, Vaxowave's Kume Luvhani argued AI amplifies whatever system it enters, and that delivery, not curriculum, is Africa's real bottleneck.

CINX is now live at two OADC sites in Cape Town, taking the exchange to six locations, while 87 of its 122 connected networks sit in a single building.

Africa Finance Corporation raised CHF 350 million in the first African digital bond, listed on the SIX Swiss Exchange and settled on a distributed ledger.

Accra-IX reports 200 Gbps against 525 Gbps of ports. Across Accra’s three exchanges only four of 39 networks are on all three; Google peers at GIXA alone.