• Egypt ranks 47th worldwide in The Global AI Index, ahead of South Africa and Ghana.

• The index evaluates 93 countries based on AI investment, innovation, and implementation.

• African countries show weak scores in development, research, talent, and infrastructure.

Egypt, South Africa, and Ghana are the African countries best positioned in the global race for artificial intelligence, according to a ranking published on Thursday, December 4, 2025, by the British weekly The Observer.

The Global AI Index (GAII) ranks 93 countries for which data are available, assessing their level of investment, innovation, and implementation in artificial intelligence. It draws on 108 indicators covering the period 2020–2025 from 23 data sources, including government reports, public databases compiled by international organizations, think tanks, and private companies.

These indicators include high-performance computing capacity, semiconductor capability, the number of AI start-ups, AI use cases in the public sector, the number of AI software developers, electrical capacity, research and development spending, the quality of AI governance institutions, the number of specialized training institutions, and activity related to AI patents.

The indicators are grouped into three pillars—investment, innovation, and implementation—and seven sub-pillars: talent, infrastructure, operating environment, research, development, business ecosystem, and government strategy.

A country’s overall score is the weighted sum of its sub-pillar scores, which themselves are the weighted sum of indicators within each sub-pillar. The sub-pillar weights are as follows: talent (11%), operating environment (8%), infrastructure (16%), research (17%), development (18%), business ecosystem (18%), and government strategy (12%).

Each sub-pillar score and the global score are normalized between 100 points and a set minimum. A score of 0 was excluded to avoid suggesting that no AI activity exists.

Egypt (47th worldwide) leads the 16 African countries covered by the index, with an overall score of 13 points. It performs best in the government strategy (56 points) and operating environment (38 points) sub-pillars. South Africa (54th worldwide) ranks second in Africa, followed by Ghana (61st), Algeria (65th), Morocco (68th), Nigeria (69th), Mauritius (70th), Kenya (74th), and Sénégal (75th). Côte d’Ivoire, ranked 84th globally, completes the African Top 10.

Overall, the African countries studied show very low scores in the development, research, business ecosystem, talent, and infrastructure sub-pillars.

Globally, the United States leads the AI race with a score of 100 points, followed by China, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and South Korea.

Walid Kéfi