Ethiopia Places Africa’s Digital and AI Future on the BRICS Agenda

Addis Ababa, September 15, 2026 (FMC) — The next phase of the digital revolution will not be determined only by who uses artificial intelligence, but increasingly by who has the capacity to shape it.

That question was at the heart of Ethiopia’s intervention at the 18th BRICS Summit in New Delhi, where Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed placed Africa’s technological future within the wider conversation on cooperation among emerging economies.

Ethiopia’s proposition was built around a simple premise: digital transformation should not leave Africa permanently positioned at the receiving end of technologies designed elsewhere.

For Ethiopia, that means building the foundations of a digital economy at home while working with partners to develop technologies capable of responding to Africa’s own languages, communities, needs and development realities.

The country has already begun building what Abiy described as digital public infrastructure, including digital identification, payment systems and data exchange mechanisms. Ethiopia is also putting in place rules governing the secure and lawful use of data as digital systems become increasingly central to economic and public life.

But artificial intelligence takes the question further.

AI is developing at a pace that is challenging existing institutions, economies and regulatory systems across the world. For countries in Africa, the challenge is not simply how to adopt these technologies, but how to ensure that the intelligence embedded in the next generation of systems reflects a much wider range of human experience.

At BRICS, Abiy argued that the next generation of AI should serve more of humanity.

That requires more than translating existing systems into additional languages. It means building technology that can understand more languages, reach more communities and draw upon a wider body of human knowledge.

For Africa, that creates a question of capability.

The continent needs researchers able to develop advanced systems, computing capacity capable of supporting them, skilled people able to work across the technology chain and institutions capable of shaping how AI is developed and deployed.

Ethiopia presented its own emerging capacity as part of that proposition.

The country’s Maddamer University of Artificial Intelligence embodies an ambition to develop African capability in a field increasingly shaping the global economy. Ethiopia wants to work with institutions across BRICS to build AI that better understands and serves Africa.

That is a different proposition from simply seeking access to imported technology.

It places knowledge, research and institutional capacity at the centre of the digital partnership Ethiopia is seeking.

The distinction is increasingly important as AI moves from being a specialized technological field into areas ranging from education and health to agriculture, manufacturing, public administration, finance and scientific research.

Countries that possess the ability to develop, adapt and govern these systems will have greater influence over how the technology affects their economies and societies.

Those that lack such capacity risk becoming consumers of technologies whose underlying assumptions, data and priorities were shaped elsewhere.

Ethiopia’s BRICS message therefore connected digital transformation with a broader principle that ran through its summit participation: resilience requires productive capability.

The same logic appeared in Ethiopia’s positions on food, pharmaceuticals, minerals and industrial development. In the digital sphere, it translates into the ability to build infrastructure, develop skills, produce knowledge and participate in technological innovation rather than relying exclusively on external solutions.

This also explains the emphasis on governance.

Ethiopia supported ethical and human-centered AI governance, while stressing that rules alone are insufficient. Good governance, in its view, must be matched by the capability to develop and use the technology responsibly.

That balance—between innovation and governance, access and capability, technology and human needs—will become increasingly important as AI reshapes economic and social systems.

BRICS provides a potentially significant platform for such cooperation because its members and partners represent large populations, expanding digital economies, technological capabilities and diverse development experiences.

For Africa, the opportunity is particularly consequential.

The continent brings linguistic and cultural diversity, a young population, rapidly expanding digital markets and development challenges that could generate entirely new applications of technology. But turning those characteristics into technological influence requires investment in research, computing infrastructure, education and institutions.

Ethiopia’s intervention at BRICS was therefore not simply a call for more digital cooperation.

It was a proposition about who should participate in building the technological systems that will increasingly shape the future.

An Africa that contributes researchers, data, languages, institutions and ideas to the development of AI will approach the digital age differently from an Africa that only imports finished technologies.

The stakes extend beyond technology itself.

Digital capability increasingly determines competitiveness, access to markets, public-service delivery, financial inclusion, industrial productivity and the ability of states to respond to shocks. Artificial intelligence is likely to deepen that relationship.

For Ethiopia, building digital public infrastructure and developing AI capability are consequently part of a much larger transformation: creating an economy and state increasingly able to operate, innovate and compete in a technology-driven global environment.

At BRICS, Ethiopia sought to connect that national transformation with a wider African ambition.

The message was ultimately about agency.

Africa should not merely ask how it can benefit from the next technological revolution. It should have the research, infrastructure, skills and institutions needed to help shape what that revolution becomes.

And if the next generation of AI is genuinely intended to serve more of humanity, Ethiopia’s proposition is that Africa should be present not only when the technology arrives—but while its intelligence, priorities and possibilities are still being built.