AI is the buzzword of the year.
And in East Africa, everyone suddenly wants a piece of the action.
We’ve got:
- AI workshops every weekend
- Panels with no builders on them
- Conferences with no working products in the room
- Whitepapers… but no working APIs
Welcome to the workshop economy where awareness is funded, but execution is not.
We Don’t Need More Conversations. We Need Commitments.
Let’s be clear: Education matters. Awareness is important.
But when the same money that could fund a local AI team for 6 months is spent on a one-day hotel event, something is broken.
We don’t need another “AI for Good” roundtable. We need AI for Payments. AI for Healthcare. AI for Agriculture. Working. In the field. In Swahili.
And the people who can build that? They’re already here. They’re just underfunded, overlooked, and over-invited to panels they don’t have time to attend.
Here’s What It Actually Takes to Build Local AI
It’s not coffee and conversation. It’s:
- Training models with dirty, messy, real-world data
- Building NLP systems that understand regional dialects
- Testing on low-end devices with poor connectivity
- Embedding AI into everyday tools like WhatsApp and USSD
- Supporting a team that can’t afford to wait 90 days for a grant disbursement
AI in Africa doesn’t die from lack of ideas. It dies from undercapitalization and shallow support.
The Builders Are Already Doing the Work
There are Tanzanians building Swahili language models. There are teams fine-tuning ASR tools on zero budget. There are startups deploying AI chatbots in production, helping SMEs grow every day.
But most of them won’t be at your AI summit. They’re too busy fixing bugs, onboarding users, and hustling for the next server payment.
They don’t need exposure. They need infrastructure, funding, and time to build.
So Here’s the Ask and the Challenge
To every NGO, donor, CSR fund, and corporate innovation lab:
- Fund actual product development not just “training and awareness.”
- Support builders who’ve shipped something not just who pitch well.
- Provide flexible capital not bureaucratic grants with 20-page logframes.
- Create follow-on funding for tools that work not just pilots that report well.
And if you do host an AI event, let it end in action: One startup funded. One tool integrated. One team backed with resources to scale.
Otherwise, it’s just another conversation that disappears Monday morning.
Africa Doesn’t Need More AI Hype. It Needs AI That Works.
We’re already solving the problems.
We’ve got the talent. We’ve got the ideas. We’ve got early traction.
Now we need the resources and respect to go the distance.