Google Highlights Key Potential in Turning AI’s Opportunity into Reality for Africa

Emma Okonji

Senior Vice President for Research, Labs, Technology & Society at Google, James Manyika, has highlighted key areas where Artificial Intelligence (AI) could benefit Africans in today’s world of digital transformation. 
Manyika who spoke at the recently concluded Global AI Summit on Africa 2025, which held in Kigali, Rwanda, said the world has witnessed technical breakthroughs coming every few months and weeks, which represent an extraordinary opportunity for Africa, insisting that turning such AI opportunity into reality will require the efforts of all Africans.

He identified four areas of significant potential of how AI could benefit Africans to include: Individual Assistance, Sector Transformation, Scientific Progress, and Addressing Societal Challenges. 
According to him, in assisting people, AI will increasingly assist, complement, empower, and inspire people. “Take for example, Google Translate, which helps people connect, access knowledge and information, and unlock opportunities. When Google first launched Translate in 2006, we offered only a few languages. Since then advances in AI have enabled us to expand to almost 250 languages, with 110 of these added in just the last year alone, including African languages that hadn’t been there before,” Manyika said.

In the area of transforming sectors and powering economic growth, he said AI would offer the potential to transform sectors that matter, from healthcare to education and agriculture, to the public sector. “For the public sector, that could look like advances like personalised and more efficient government services for everyone, in agriculture, improved crop yields, water use and food security. Inside sectors, AI also can power the innovation and growth of entrepreneurs as well as small and large businesses, enabling economy-wide productivity gains and economic growth. To give a sense of the scale of this economic opportunity, GSMA recently shared estimates that suggest that AI could add up to $2.9 trillion to Africa’s economy by 2030. As the continent with the world’s youngest and fastest-growing workforce, capitalising on this opportunity is essential for future prosperity,” he said.
In advancing scientific progress, Manyika spoke about the AlphaFold, which is Google’s Nobel Prize winning AI system that enabled the prediction of the structures of all 200 million proteins known to science. According to him, Knowledge of protein structures is critical for understanding diseases, developing drugs, treatments, therapies and more. To date, over 2.5 million researchers in over 190 countries are freely using AlphaFold, with more than 25,000 of them in Africa.

Manyika said: “Disaster response is an instructive example of what’s possible. With natural disasters like floods, we know that advance warnings can save lives. So at Google we’ve used AI to make advances in flood forecasting and in just two years we’ve expanded to over 100 countries, covering areas where more than 700 million people live – this includes 41 countries in Africa. And in the past month, we’ve rolled out AI-powered Nowcasting in Search across Africa, helping people make informed decisions with high-quality weather forecasts for the next 12 hours.”

In order for Africa to capitalise on the AI opportunities, Manyika urged Africans to take action in five key areas, detailed in Google’s ‘AI Sprinters’ Policy Blueprint for Africa, which talked about investment in foundational infrastructure; talent development; expansion of African research and development capacity; creation and scaling of vibrant AI ecosystems; and cross-continent and global partnerships.

According to him, collaboration is vital for accelerating and scaling all the above, adding that African-led innovation will be essential to making this happen.
“In all of these areas, there is work for governments and policy-makers to enable the actions needed at a local, regional, and continental scale,” Manyika further said.