Kenya is positioning itself to be Africa’s leading artificial intelligence (AI) hub for model innovation, driving sustainable development, economic growth and social inclusion.
Prime Cabinet Secretary Musalia Mudavadi has said Kenya strives to take lead in AI research and application keeping in mind the transformative potential of AI moving into the future.
Mudavadi who represented Kenya at the just concluded Global AI Summit 2025 in Kigali, Rwanda has affirmed that Kenya is also looking at ensuring the AI ecosystem is secure.
“In Kenya, there’s already a very serious conversation that is taking place and our focus is implement a strategy that provides a comprehensive framework to guide Kenya in harnessing the transformative power of AI, ensuring its deployment benefits all sectors of society while adhering to ethical principles and inclusivity,” said Mudavadi.
“As a continent, we need to not allow ourselves to be driven by fear. Fear should not drive us out of town on this agenda of artificial intelligence,” added Mudavadi.
Mudavadi noted that Kenya is setting out a government-led vision for ethical, inclusive, and innovation-driven AI adoption that will not only shape Kenya’s future but also be a strategic landmark on the continent.
This he said is backed by the recently released first National Artificial Intelligence Strategy (2025–2030), by the Ministry of Information, Communications and the Digital Economy.
He explained that at the core of this strategy is Kenya’s aspiration to adopt AI technologies and lead in AI model innovation and commercialization, creating solutions tailored to its unique needs and those of the African continent.
“Investment in education becomes very critical considering our budgetary allocation of up to Ksh 600 billion one education. We need to ensure that component of our budget is driven to the right programs tailored towards tooling the youth towards AI driven technologies,” explained Mudavadi.
“Kenya’s programs that focus on Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics will be re-defined and strengthened because we have a massive young techno-savvy population that need to be equipped at the onset,” he added.
Mudavadi said healthcare, agriculture, financial services and public administration are named as strategic AI priorities for Kenya with health tech and smart agriculture being some of the examples that Kenya is investing heavily upon to ensure its AI envisioned strategy takes off at a rapid speed.
The expanded digital infrastructure, data centers, and cloud resources, as well as national research hubs are among other resources that Kenya is building its AI capacity around with key legislations being drafted to guide this space.
“What Kenya is also doing is to have sweeteners to attract the youth in the fields like agriculture, and that is where AI comes in to ensure that the youth take interest in sectors that initially largely relied on traditional labour-intensive practices,” noted the Prime CS.
In Kigali, the Prime Cabinet Secretary outlined Kenya’s interventions in ensuring that it gains enough computing infrastructure to power its AI given that it is one of Africa’s largest producers of renewable energy and also ranked amongst the top 5 Africa’s most AI-ready nations as per the Oxford Insights’ 2022 report.
He told the summit that Kenya is heavily investing in building data centres to address the shortage of computing infrastructures keeping in mind that energy is becoming a critical infrastructure to power the data centres in future.
Mudavadi noted that Kenya’s grid is about 93pc green energy focused on renewable and green energy, saying the key component of investing in energy as a continent will help drive the AI agenda steadily.
“We need to also look broadly on how we invest in the energy sector as a continent. Because we have made it quite expensive, in my view, for people to invest in the energy sector on the continent. We need to look at this component critically and what would be the incentives we can we give so that those who want to come and invest in particularly solar, wind and geothermal energy do it with ease,” he told the Global AI Summit.
“We also need to work closely, coordinate as a continent, and make sure that we direct resources to upgrade our capacity in artificial intelligence and in technology as a whole. Policy makers on the continent need to look at specific areas of interest keeping in mind that artificial intelligence is the heart of the fourth industrial revolution, reshaping economies, redefining power, and rewriting the rules of progress,” added Mudavadi.
The summit acknowledged that Africa’s future on AI should be built by design and not by default.
“As governments we don’t have enough resources to drive this AI and other technologies. As a continent we must loosen up and ensure that we bring the private sector on board and collaborate with them and allow them to thrive in nearly all sectors,” said Mudavadi.
The African Union has already adopted a number of policy frameworks that will enable the continent develop AI strategies with an establishment of a 5-year plan, phased between 2025-2026 and 2028-2030.
