Kenya, Italy hand 130 African startups keys to AI revolution

Kenya's Special Envoy on Technology, Ambassador Philip Thigo, speaks at the Nairobi AI Forum where 120 African innovators secured compute access. [Bernard Orwongo, Standard]

Kenya and Italy have granted computer access to 130 African innovators, positioning Nairobi at the centre of the continent's artificial intelligence revolution.

The Nairobi AI Forum 2026, organised with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), convened over 500 participants on February 9-10 and comes ahead of the Italy-Africa Summit in Ethiopia and the AI Impact Summit in India.

"While the industrial era was shaped by energy and manufacturing, and the digital era by connectivity and software, the Intelligence Economy will be defined by compute infrastructure, sovereign talent and shared innovation," said Ambassador Philip Thigo, Kenya's Special Envoy on Technology.

Italy's Minister of University and Research, Senator Anna Maria Bernini, reinforced this vision, noting that "strengthening skills, training and research is the strategic choice to support innovation, technological sovereignty and inclusive progress in Africa."

Ambassador Vincenzo Del Monaco revealed that 1.5 million graphics processing unit hours have already been distributed through Cineca, Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft.

The forum spotlighted the AI Hub for Sustainable Development, launched through a partnership between UNDP and the Italian G7 presidency.

The hub's Compute Accelerator Programme selected 120 ventures from over 300 applications across the continent, providing them with compute resources and acceleration support from November 2025 to April 2026.

The Africa Green Compute Coalition was also unveiled, working with partners including Alliance4AI, Axum, Kytabu and Cineca to expand access to sustainable AI compute infrastructure across the continent.

A space-enabled AI collaboration linking Kenya's Ministry of Agriculture, NASA Harvest, Microsoft and the Italian Space Agency will harness geospatial data to strengthen food security and climate resilience.

The forum also addressed cybersecurity readiness, with Cyber 4.0 and Cisco launching an open call to equip African AI startups with secure-by-design principles.

Jean-Luc Stalon, UNDP's Resident Representative, noted the initiative focuses on "re-imagining and delivering concrete private-sector-driven AI partnerships to improve lives in communities."