AIDC² Expo
An AI-generated picture: leaders from Africa and the Arab world around a table under a glowing map of the two regions, Cairo at night behind them

Sovereign Infrastructure for AI

High-Level Roundtable

Africa's and the Arab region's AI, built at home

Co-organized by AIDC² Expo, AICTO and Smart Africa

  • AICTO, the Arab ICT Organization
  • Smart Africa

, Cairo

Africa and the Arab region cannot benefit fully from AI without building their own infrastructure and mastering their data centers, compute, networks and data. Today, most of the data and models used on the continent are hosted and trained outside its borders.

This dependency creates three concrete problems:

CairoTunis · AICTOKigali · Smart Africa

Data from twelve cities flowing to Cairo · AICTO in Tunis · Smart Africa in Kigali

  • Data sovereignty

    Public, financial and health data fall outside national legal frameworks.

  • Cost and latency

    Access to compute (GPUs) remains limited and expensive for governments, researchers and startups.

  • Relevance

    Models are poorly adapted to African and Arab languages, contexts and priorities.

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AIDC² Expo 2026, held alongside the 30th Cairo ICT under the patronage of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT), puts AI infrastructure and its impact on Africa and the Arab region, including FinTech and HealthTech, at the heart of its program.

Objectives

Discuss a joint Arab-Africa roadmap for sovereign, pooled and interoperable AI infrastructure.

  1. Build a shared picture of existing AI compute capacity and readiness (including data centers, compute/GPU capacity, energy, connectivity and data protection frameworks) and identify the key infrastructure gaps.

  2. Identify and discuss workable pooling models: regional sovereign clouds, shared compute centers, federated GPU access, public-private partnerships.

  3. Agree on common principles for data governance and data localization.

Format, participants and partners

The initiative runs in two parts: a closed-door roundtable, then a public panel.

The Through the Looking Glass: AI-Ready Infrastructure in 5 Years panel at AIDC² Expo 2025Part 1

Closed-door roundtable

Leading African and Arab AI experts and decision-makers, with representatives of AICTO, Smart Africa and AIDC² Expo, in a structured discussion around the themes above.

The Financial & Banking Infrastructure in the Years to Come panel at AIDC² Expo 2025Part 2

Public panel

Key AI leaders present the roundtable's conclusions and debate them with the AIDC² Expo audience.

Hear the conclusions at the public panel: your free AIDC² Expo 2026 pass gets you in.

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