Emmanuel Elolo Agbenonwossi, an international consultant in cyberdiplomacy and AI governance, has emerged as one of the more outspoken African voices on digital sovereignty. He contributed to Guinea’s national AI strategy with the UNDP and has been active in global internet governance forums, including Internet Society and ICANN.

In this interview, he offers a blunt assessment of Africa’s digital transformation: strategies that remain underfunded, institutions that lack resilience, and a growing need to ground AI governance in African realities.

Ecofin Agency: You contributed to Guinea’s national AI strategy. In a context where external funding often shapes digital policy, how “African” are these strategies in practice?

Emmanuel Elolo Agbenonwossi: The question is legitimate. It would be naïve to deny the influence of external funding. Institutions like the World Bank, UNDP, and bilateral agencies play both technical and financial roles.

But reducing these strategies to imported agendas would be inaccurate. In Guinea, we conducted 78 bilateral consultations across government, academia, regulators, operators, and development partners. The goal was to establish a realistic baseline—data infrastructure, connectivity, energy capacity—without flattering policymakers.

A truly African strategy is not one that isolates itself from global dynamics. It is one aligned with national priorities, grounded in local realities, and connected to continental frameworks like the African Union’s AI strategy adopted in 2024. The real issue is not where the funding comes from, but whether countries define their own vision and hold their ground in negotiations.

AI is the only technological revolution that no country fully controls yet. That makes it a rare opportunity.

Ecofin Agency: In practice, how do you push back against donor influence?

EEA: In Guinea, donors initially wanted a three-year strategy. That made little sense. Digital transformation requires long-term investment.

We proposed a ten-year framework in three phases: first, build the foundations—cloud infrastructure, computing capacity, engineering skills. Guinea had no supercomputing capacity at all. Then comes deployment in public services, followed by an acceleration phase.

The target was to train 5,000 engineers and upskill 50,000 public sector workers. AI is the only technological revolution that no country fully controls yet. That makes it a rare opportunity.

Ecofin Agency: Is AI really a priority for countries that still lack basic infrastructure?

EEA: Absolutely. Africa is often described as having missed previous industrial revolutions. That narrative is incomplete, but AI is different. No one fully dominates it yet.

The imbalance is clear: Africa represents 17% of the global population but produces less than 1% of AI technologies. Without deliberate strategies, the continent risks becoming a passive market for algorithmic exploitation.

There are three priorities. First, build local capacity to avoid marginalization. Second, develop context-specific applications—in agriculture, energy, health—rather than importing solutions designed for Europe. Third, and most critically, fund these strategies.

Many countries have AI strategies. Very few have the budgets to implement them. In Guinea, we identified more than 45 active strategies—often overlapping, sometimes contradictory, each tied to a different donor. The real deficit is not strategy design. It is execution.

Ecofin Agency: So where does implementation stand today?

EEA: The problem is structural. African countries do not lack strategies—they lack financing.

The pragmatic approach is to align national priorities with donor funding cycles. It is not ideal from a sovereignty perspective, but it reflects reality. In advanced economies, digital strategies are funded by the state and private sector. In Africa, that capacity is limited.

Without sovereign funding mechanisms, donors will continue to shape priorities. That needs to be acknowledged.

In Guinea, we identified more than 45 active strategies—often overlapping, sometimes contradictory, each tied to a different donor. The real deficit is not strategy design. It is execution.

Ecofin Agency: What role can the private sector play in such fragmented markets?

EEA: The issue is scale. When fewer than 500,000 people are connected in a country, no serious investor will commit significant capital.

The priority must be a unified digital market. A startup cannot survive on a fragmented base. But a regional market of 400 million people, like ECOWAS, changes the equation.

This requires three pillars: shared infrastructure, interoperable payment systems, and portable digital identities. These are not theoretical ideas. Regional roaming initiatives already show this is possible.

And let me be clear: a startup that survives on grants for five years is not viable. Africa needs national champions supported beyond the prototype stage.

Ecofin Agency: Are continental initiatives like Smart Africa or AU frameworks effective?

EEA: Too often, they remain symbolic. Africa has produced many policy frameworks, but few are backed by financing, timelines, or evaluation mechanisms.

The next decade must focus on institutional consolidation, not new declarations. A strategy is only credible if it is funded and measurable.

When fewer than 500,000 people are connected in a country, no serious investor will commit significant capital.

The priority must be a unified digital market. A startup cannot survive on a fragmented base. But a regional market of 400 million people, like ECOWAS, changes the equation.

Ecofin Agency: You were deeply involved in the Afrinic crisis—the African IP address registry—which went through years of institutional dysfunction, canceled elections, and ongoing legal battles. What does this crisis reveal about Africa’s ability to manage its own digital institutions?

Emmanuel Elolo Agbenonwossi: The Afrinic crisis is one of the most troubling paradoxes in Africa’s digital governance. Afrinic is the only digital infrastructure truly built by Africans themselves, after a difficult process in 2005, at a time when no country trusted Africa to manage an IP registry without disrupting global internet routing. Twenty years later, that same institution became a target.

The crisis stemmed from a vulnerability that African states had not anticipated. The continent holds less than 5% of global IPv4 addresses despite accounting for 17% of the world’s population. A private operator—a shell company registered in the Seychelles and controlled by a Chinese national—recognized the value of these underused and poorly monitored African IP addresses on the global black market.

By bribing an internal staff member, this actor obtained millions of IP addresses, becoming the third-largest holder on the continent, ahead of MTN and Orange. These addresses were then leased for as much as $41 per unit to illicit platforms. When Afrinic attempted to reclaim them, the operator launched around 50 simultaneous legal cases in Mauritian courts, effectively paralyzing the registry—freezing its accounts, blocking board renewals, and forcing out its CEO.

Ecofin Agency: How was the situation eventually resolved?

EEA: The resolution came through a multi-layered strategy over several years. With Smart Africa, we first focused on awareness, engaging Afrinic’s 2,300 members to help them understand that this was not just a technical association, but a critical infrastructure for Africa’s digital sovereignty.

We also organized ministerial-level discussions—online and in cities like Istanbul, Seattle, and Prague—to convince governments to directly involve telecom operators in the electoral process. This helped invalidate around 800 proxy votes that had been purchased by the actor in question.

The September 2025 elections, which that actor boycotted, ultimately resulted in 7 out of 8 board seats going to candidates backed by Smart Africa.

This crisis shows how fragile Africa’s digital sovereignty can be. The continent’s most strategic digital institution was operating as a simple Mauritian legal entity, without protection under an international treaty or recognition as a continental body. That is what must be addressed first.

Ecofin Agency: You mention corruption networks. Where was African civil society in all this? Does it really influence global internet governance?

EEA: Honestly, no. And I say that as someone who has participated in these forums since 2016. African civil society is present—sometimes in large numbers—but structurally weak. It participates, but it does not shape outcomes.

The reason is both simple and profound. In the U.S. and Europe, civil society actors are backed by powerful private interests that provide funding, legal expertise, and technical capacity. Many are effectively lobbyists representing companies like Google, Amazon, or Alibaba under the banner of civil society.

In Africa, civil society depends on fellowships and grants from those same external actors. As a result, it engages with agendas that are given to it, rather than ones it defines.

In negotiations such as the Global Digital Compact, how many African governments were able to impose their real priorities? That question deserves a clear and honest answer.

Ecofin Agency: What does digital sovereignty actually mean for African states today?

EEA: Digital sovereignty is not just about passing laws or signing declarations. It rests on four pillars: infrastructure, data, human capacity, and technological control. And across all four, Africa starts from a disadvantaged position.

Most submarine cables connecting the continent are financed and controlled by foreign actors. Terrestrial backbone networks are largely built by foreign private companies.

On data, Africa lacks sovereign cloud infrastructure. Much of the continent’s public data is hosted abroad. Under those conditions, sovereignty is difficult to claim. Connectivity remains concentrated in urban areas, leaving rural populations underserved. And in terms of computing power, both universities and governments have very limited capacity.

Even when data centers are built locally, African countries must have the ability to audit them—to verify security systems and control their architecture. Without that, data localization alone is meaningless. These structural foundations must be built if sovereignty is to become more than a slogan.

Ecofin Agency: Your recent work explores AI governance rooted in African philosophies, particularly the Fa system. Is that a serious framework or a form of ideological positioning?

EEA: It is both an intellectual and political conviction. Africa should not mechanically replicate regulatory frameworks developed elsewhere, based on different histories and social structures. AI governance on the continent must emerge from its own realities.

Take Ubuntu—“I am because we are.” It provides an ethical foundation centered on community rather than individual contracts. It invites us to rethink data sovereignty, algorithmic responsibility, and technological justice through social relationships.

The Fa system, from West Africa, is equally compelling. It is a structured system of knowledge, prediction, and decision-making—what we would now call a decision-support system. What stands out is its built-in caution: decisions are not made without exhausting all possible interpretations.

Modern AI systems often fail precisely because they lack this caution—they produce confident but flawed outputs. Integrating such logic into African AI systems is a serious avenue worth exploring.

The goal is not to reject global standards, but to reinterpret them through African perspectives. A truly African model of AI governance would not replicate Brussels or Washington. It would offer a distinct contribution—one grounded in human dignity, collective responsibility, and technological sovereignty.

Interview by Fiacre E. Kakpo