Senegal and the Gates Foundation have launched the Senegal AI Scaling Hub in Dakar to push AI from pilot projects into deployed solutions in health, agriculture and education.
The hub will connect researchers, startups, businesses and students to build practical AI applications for local needs.
It is one of three parts of a partnership agreed in September 2025 between President Bassirou Diomaye Faye and Gates Foundation chair Bill Gates, valued at more than $10 million. The other two cover a secure, interoperable digital identity system and a delivery unit to monitor priority public-sector digital projects. No separate budget for the hub was disclosed.
Building, not just buying
The hub supports Senegal’s New Technological Deal, the national digital strategy aimed at technological sovereignty and a digital economy built on local skills. Its eighth priority programme, Senegal Digital Factory, aims to turn the country from a consumer of foreign technology into a producer of its own.
Earlier in October, the government also signed a separate $151 million partnership under the Digital Factory programme with the Global Investment and Business Council for Africa and Blue Cloud Softech.
What it has to build on
Senegal’s ability to scale home-grown AI will depend on skills, usable data and computing power. In an August submission to the International Telecommunication Union, it highlighted SENEGAL-AI, a language model architecture developed by the LITA laboratory at Cheikh Anta Diop University’s École Supérieure Polytechnique, which runs on the CINERI Taouey supercomputer.
The new hub is meant to turn research capabilities like these into applications used across the economy.
Based on reporting by Ecofin Agency.
