According to UNCTAD's latest update, Africa needs to invest $61 billion a year to close its digital infrastructure gap. In 2024, barely $15 billion was invested, four times less than needed.
While the debate continues, twenty-five countries have adopted MOSIP, an open-source digital identity platform developed in Bangalore. The Ghana Card, Rwanda's digital identity, which already covers nearly nine adults in ten, and Kenya's Maisha Namba are essential tools. They allow the state to pay a grant, treat a child or track a parcel without depending on the servers of a foreign company. That is what digital sovereignty means: public registries hosted in Kigali, Accra or Nairobi, not in a data centre in California.
This is where the partnership with Europe should be built: not through statements of ethical principle, but through concrete joint investment. That means low-carbon data centres, training in artificial intelligence models in African languages, and aligning data protection rules between Europe's GDPR and the future AfCFTA digital protocol. Compared with Washington and Beijing, Brussels has an asset: regulation already grounded in fundamental rights. It still has to offer it as a partner rather than impose it, accepting that continental standards are drafted in Addis Ababa and applied in the same way on both sides of the Mediterranean.
Africa's digital future should be neither American nor Chinese, but African.
Efficient Network — MEA Strategy & Development Consulting.