Africa cannot achieve its full development potential while its digital backbone is externally controlled. Africa is rapidly adopting digital systems across public administration, finance, health, land management, taxation, and procurement. These systems promise efficiency, transparency, and improved service delivery. However, the dominant model of digitalization across the continent relies heavily on foreign-owned, foreign-managed, and foreign-maintained digital infrastructure. This reliance poses serious challenges to Africa’s economic sovereignty, job creation, innovation capacity, and long-term development prospects.
This policy brief argues that Africa’s digital transformation, as currently structured, risks reinforcing dependency rather than enabling the people-driven development envisioned in African Union Agenda 2063. It calls for a strategic shift toward African ownership, capacity-building, and value retention in the digital economy.
Digital Infrastructure as Strategic Economic Infrastructure
In the 21st century, digital systems play a role comparable to transport, energy, and telecommunications infrastructure in earlier eras of development. Government enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, e-procurement platforms, tax administration software, biometric identity systems, and national data infrastructures now form the backbone of state capacity and economic governance.
When these systems are externally controlled, African governments become structurally dependent on foreign vendors for the core functionality of their digital operations and for system upgrades that are essential to keep public services running. Decisions about pricing structures, licensing terms, and renewal conditions are determined outside the continent, often with limited transparency or negotiating power on the part of public authorities. Long-term maintenance and cybersecurity support are similarly outsourced, locking governments into ongoing contractual obligations and exposing critical public systems to risks beyond their direct control. In addition, data storage and governance frameworks are frequently subject to external legal and regulatory regimes, weakening national data sovereignty and limiting governments’ ability to fully govern, protect, and strategically use their own public and citizens’ data. This dependency limits policy flexibility and locks countries into long-term contractual arrangements that are often costly to exit or renegotiate.
Financial Outflows and Structural Dependency
Across the continent, governments spend millions of dollars annually on software licenses, cloud hosting, system upgrades, and technical support contracts with foreign technology firms. These expenditures are recurring, denominated in foreign currency, and tend to increase over time as systems expand and become more complex.
Rather than building domestic digital capacity, this model channels public funds—often raised through taxation or external borrowing—out of African economies. The result is a form of structural digital dependency, where Africa finances technological ecosystems abroad while underinvesting in its own innovation and workforce development.
This dynamic contradicts the objectives of sustainable development and fiscal resilience, particularly in countries already facing debt pressures and limited budgetary space.
Agenda 2063 and the Question of Digital Sovereignty
Agenda 2063, the African Union’s long-term development framework, envisions “an Africa whose development is people-driven, relying on the potential of African people, especially its youth and women.” It identifies science, technology, and innovation as central drivers of structural transformation, industrialization, and economic diversification.¹
However, innovation presupposes ownership. A continent that consumes digital products without controlling their design, governance, and evolution cannot fully realize the goals of Agenda 2063. Digital procurement systems, data platforms, and national information infrastructures should be treated as strategic national assets, not merely outsourced services.
When these digital assets are foreign-owned, the consequences extend well beyond technical dependence. Data sovereignty is weakened as sensitive public and personal information is stored, processed, or governed under external legal jurisdictions, reducing states’ ability to fully protect citizens’ rights and national interests. Policy autonomy is constrained by proprietary systems that limit local customization and lock governments into predefined technological pathways that may not reflect local priorities or evolving needs. Over time, long-term costs escalate through licensing fees, mandatory upgrades, and foreign-currency maintenance contracts, reinforcing structural dependency rather than reducing it. At the same time, local innovation ecosystems are marginalized, as domestic firms and developers are excluded from core system design and ownership, limiting skills development and entrepreneurship. Under these conditions, the aspirations of Agenda 2063 cannot be realized, because Africa remains a digital tenant—renting its most critical infrastructure—rather than a digital owner capable of shaping its own development trajectory.
Implications for Youth Employment and Innovation
Africa is the youngest continent in the world, with millions of young people entering the labor market each year. The digital economy has the potential to create high-quality, well-paying jobs in software development, systems engineering, cybersecurity, data science, and digital services.
Yet the prevailing model of imported digital systems relegates African professionals largely to end-user or low-level support roles. High-value activities—system architecture, core development, intellectual property ownership—remain concentrated outside the continent. This limits skills transfer, stifles entrepreneurship, and contributes to brain drain.
According to the World Bank’s Digital Economy for Africa (DE4A) initiative, digital skills and local innovation ecosystems are essential if Africa is to harness digitalization for inclusive growth and job creation.² Without deliberate investment in domestic digital capacity, the employment potential of digital transformation will remain unrealized.
Economic Diversification and Long-Term Development
Many African economies remain heavily dependent on extractive industries such as mining, oil, and gas. These sectors generate limited employment and expose countries to volatile global commodity markets. Digital industries, by contrast, are knowledge-intensive, scalable, and capable of supporting multiple sectors simultaneously.
Owning and maintaining digital public infrastructure can serve as a foundation for broader economic diversification—supporting local technology firms, stimulating innovation, and creating linkages with manufacturing, agriculture, finance, and services. External control of the digital backbone undermines this opportunity and perpetuates narrow, extractive development models.
Policy Implications and Strategic Direction
Africa’s digital transformation must move beyond adoption toward ownership and value creation. This requires:
- Treating digital public infrastructure as a strategic public good
- Investing at scale in digital skills, education, and workforce development
- Reforming public procurement to prioritize local and regional digital solutions and technology transfer
- Strengthening regional cooperation to build shared platforms and reduce duplication
The AU Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020–2030) underscores the importance of digital sovereignty, skills development, and inclusive digital economies.³ Implementation of this strategy must now be accelerated and aligned with national procurement and investment decisions
If Africa’s digital backbone remains externally controlled, digital transformation will deepen dependency, accelerate capital outflows, and limit job creation. To achieve the vision of Agenda 2063, Africa must build, own, and govern its digital infrastructure—empowering its people, retaining value within its economies, and laying the foundation for sustainable, inclusive growth.
The choice facing Africa is clear: remain a consumer in the global digital economy, or become a creator and owner of its digital future.
References:
- African Union Commission. Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want (Popular Version). Addis Ababa, 2015.
- World Bank Group. Digital Economy for Africa (DE4A) Initiative. Washington, DC, 2019–2023.
- African Union Commission. The Digital Transformation Strategy for Africa (2020–2030). Addis Ababa, 2020.
