A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed by tech companies, Lakeba Group (Australia), Next Digital (Nigeria), AqlanX (UAE), and Agentic Dynamic (Netherlands) to create a joint venture called AfricAI.
The goal of AfricAI, a historic project to develop regional digital infrastructure and Africa’s AI sovereignty, is to localise, implement, and market enterprise-grade AI solutions specifically for African markets. To deliver significant AI applications in healthcare, digital identity, document automation, public administration, and enterprise services, AfricAI will immediately concentrate on Nigeria as its flagship market, utilising the country’s current data centres and edge infrastructure, the joint statement said.
Built locally, for local needs, the joint venture seeks to establish Africa as a leading developer of autonomous, inclusive, and context-aware AI ecosystems.
According to them in a statement: “We are bringing together four complementary pillars—global IP, regional expertise, deployment excellence, and next-gen agentic AI architecture—to create an AI foundation that reflects African realities.”
They stated that the goal of AfricAI was to develop AI in Africa, by Africa, for Africa, rather than outsourcing it to the continent.
Continuing, they had this to say: “AfricAI envisions the development of a distributed, interoperable AI network across Africa. With localised applications in agriculture, urban planning, public services, and education, AfricAI seeks to empower African governments, enterprises, and communities with trusted, transparent AI infrastructure.”
BrandSpur technology and information news desk reports that the JV intends to train more than 100 regional AI professionals and establish data, deployment, and decision-making on the continent by 2026 by expanding into Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, and Rwanda.
Developing and implementing autonomous AI applications that are suited to regional market demands in domains like digital identity, document automation, healthcare, education, and enterprise services are among the goals of the strategic partnership. To enable adaptive and explainable AI across industries like public policy, legal, human resources, and CRM, the joint venture is also anticipated to incorporate a modular, agent-based AI architecture.
Following national data residency regulations, it will make use of Nigeria’s current edge and cloud infrastructure to guarantee that AI workloads are hosted, processed, and governed locally. To foster a regional talent pipeline in AI development, cybersecurity, model tuning, and ethical deployment, the statement also states that it will create a Centre of Excellence (CoE).
“AfricAI will prioritise the design and deployment of scalable AI solutions that address national development goals and market opportunities. Initial deployments include sovereign AI for identity and compliance, document intelligence and knowledge automation, agentic AI assistants, and multilingual health and citizen services,” they added.
According to Prince Malik Ado-Ibrahim, the Chairman of Next Digital, the company was forming AI to represent “who we are as Nigerians and Africans” rather than merely implementing it. “AfricAI is about more than software. It’s about exporting our intelligence, building our future on our terms, and making Africa a force in the global AI conversation. Nigeria will lead that movement — and we are ready.”
According to Giuseppe Porcelli, the CEO of Lakeba Group, Lakeba has long been at the forefront of AI innovation worldwide. He said: “AfricAI marks a bold next step — not just for Lakeba, but for the future of sovereign AI. Nigeria offers the ideal launchpad for building a truly African AI ecosystem. With our flagship DoxAI platform and deep capabilities in cybersecurity, automation, and orchestration, we are proud to architect the AI infrastructure Africa needs and deserves.”
Localisation, multilingual compliance, and digital trust are fundamental to our AI philosophy, according to Demetrio Russo, the Founder and CEO of AqlanX. He said: “AfricAI reflects a strategic intent by AqlanX to help shape Africa’s digital sovereignty agenda while enabling secure, AI-first innovation ecosystems built for scale, ethics, and inclusion.”
According to Eren Sivasli, Chairman of Agentic Dynamic, the company was thrilled about its involvement in the project. He said: “We believe in scalable, domain-specific automation that truly supports human workflows. That’s why we’re excited to bring Agentic Dynamics’ segment-oriented agent architecture into this multinational collaboration.”
