Speakers at the seventh annual ICT Editors Xchange, held in Johannesburg under the theme “Africa’s Intelligence, Africa’s Terms,” argued this week that the continent’s AI advantage will depend on training systems on African data, teaching in African languages and owning the cloud infrastructure underneath.
The Huawei-hosted event brought together figures from the Chinese technology giant, South African academia and business to examine local data, indigenous-language education and cloud infrastructure — with the sharpest news line coming from a Johannesburg-based music AI startup that says African data accounts for less than one-twentieth of one percent of the datasets underpinning the world’s AI music models.
Gift Lubele, founder and chief executive of AuraaAfrica, told the gathering that 94% of all AI music models are trained on Western data, with African data making up just 0.04% — a fraction he said threatens African cultural presence in the AI era. “If we don’t include ourselves in these AI models, we cease to exist,” Lubele said, calling on the continent to move away from consumption and toward the creation of its own datasets. AuraaAfrica recently won the Grand Innovation Prize at Huawei’s Code4Mzansi developer competition, chosen from 1,040 entries.
Dr Olaperi Okuboyejo of the University of Pretoria set out a paradox in South African schooling: a record 88% matric pass rate and the largest-ever cohort sitting alongside a deep early-learning crisis. “Eighty-one percent of Grade 4 learners in South Africa cannot read for meaning in any language,” she said. Mainstream AI tools still perform poorly in African languages, Okuboyejo added, spotlighting her lab’s work on indigenous-language datasets and pan-Afrikan language models.
Opening the event, Huawei South Africa deputy chief executive Charles Cheng argued that Africa should define the terms of its own intelligence rather than inherit them. “African intelligence, African terms means systems that are trained on our realities and designed for our needs,” he said. “It means innovation that works with small businesses, schools, hospitals, researchers, entrepreneurs and public institutions.” The next chapter of the continent’s digital transformation, he said, would be driven by cloud computing, AI, connectivity, secure networks, data infrastructure and talent — and hinged on “ownership of the platforms and autonomy over the questions we ask, the problems we choose to solve, the data we use, the languages we include and the value we create.”
Digital futurist Nicky Verd delivered a keynote titled “The Future Belongs to the Adaptable,” arguing that Africa’s AI advantage lay in the ability to move quickly rather than being constrained by legacy systems. Citing Kodak and Nokia, Verd said the greater risk was complacency, not technology, and warned against a “Titanic mindset” among businesses that believed they were too big to sink. “The real threat isn’t just job loss,” she said. “It is becoming mentally obsolete while you are still employed.”
Closing out the technical framing, Huawei Cloud South Africa director of cloud solutions sales Calvin Huang traced a rapid shift from generative to agentic to physical AI, citing Huawei founder Ren Zhengfei’s view that AI may be “the last technological revolution in human society.” The economic opportunity was equally significant, Huang said, with AI investment projected to reach $810 billion by 2028. South Africa, he added, still faced challenges around deployment, cost and data sovereignty — problems he said Huawei was addressing through open AI systems, local infrastructure and industry partnerships, with the company’s AI infrastructure now live in its Johannesburg cloud region.
