Hui Warns Africa Over Foreign Control of AI Infrastructure

ABUJA, Nigeria — Africa risks being confined to a subordinate position in the global artificial intelligence economy unless it secures genuine ownership of the infrastructure behind the technology, Luminate CEO Melanie Hui has warned.

Hui made the remarks while delivering the keynote address at the Build 2026 Conference in Abuja on Wednesday. Her address focused on digital sovereignty, cloud dependence, data governance, language representation, regulation, labour rights and the role of philanthropy in building African technology capacity.

Cloud dependence and digital ownership

Hui said Nigeria reportedly loses millions of dollars each year because of its reliance on cloud infrastructure controlled by a small number of foreign technology companies. She did not provide a precise figure or identify the companies involved.

She argued that placing a data centre within a country’s borders does not by itself give that country control over its digital future. “A country does not own its digital future when a data centre merely sits within its borders,” Hui said.

According to Hui, the key questions include who controls the infrastructure, who can afford to use it, what powers it, whose data it processes and where the resulting economic value goes. She also pointed to the concentration of microchips, cloud servers, energy and specialised talent in foreign markets as a source of continuing dependence.

“Talking about AI for the sake of AI often misses the point,” she said, urging stakeholders to focus instead on infrastructure control, value capture and public accountability.

Lessons from India

Hui referred to an initiative by India’s Ministry of Agriculture that used artificial intelligence to predict monsoon patterns for nearly 40 million farmers. She said the project was supported by local demand, public climate data, a century of local rainfall records and an SMS distribution network operating in native languages.

Hui cited researcher Rose Mutiso’s assessment that artificial intelligence was “the last piece of this breakthrough, not the first”. The example was presented as evidence that successful technology deployment depends on strong local foundations rather than technology alone.

Infrastructure, data and language

Hui also discussed research commissioned by Luminate from the Global Centre on AI Governance. She said undersea fibre-optic cables carrying Africa’s internet traffic closely follow historical trade and extraction routes.

“Infrastructure lives in the shadows of power,” Hui said. She added that the cables determine who connects to whom, who controls access points, who pays rent and who extracts value.

On data governance, Hui cautioned against treating African communities as passive sources of information for foreign product development. She said data encompasses people’s identities, behaviours, relationships and lives, rather than being comparable only to a raw commodity.

Hui further raised concerns about the limited representation of African languages in modern AI platforms. She said the platforms remain largely unresponsive to Africa’s linguistic diversity, despite the continent being home to a third of the world’s languages.

Regulation and shared prosperity

Hui rejected the argument that regulation necessarily blocks technical innovation. She cited algorithmic bias, technology-facilitated abuse and flawed identity-verification deployments as continuing harms that require safeguards.

“Safeguards are the allies of progress,” she said, arguing that worker bargaining power, properly resourced regulators and capable courts are necessary for prosperity to be shared.

Hui pointed to action by Nigeria’s competition watchdog against Meta over data exploitation and the unionisation of Nigerian e-hailing drivers as examples of growing regulatory and civic momentum across the continent.

She called on philanthropic foundations to provide sustained support to researchers, civil society organisations and labour movements. Hui said Luminate would stand with African stakeholders in pursuing what she described as a better digital age.

“The global AI order is not settled,” she said, adding that this placed a responsibility on the current generation to build an AI economy rooted in African agency, capability and imagination.