Former Vice President Dr Mahamudu Bawumia has highlighted the relationship between digitalisation and artificial intelligence, stressing their immense impact on Africa’s progress in the digital age.

Delivering a keynote address at the London School of Economics and Political Science Africa Summit in London on Saturday, March 28, 2026, on the theme Artificial Intelligence and Unifying Borders, Dr Bawumia explained that AI is the latest transformation of the digital age. He noted that countries which have not fully embraced digitalisation cannot effectively deploy AI, which he said will shape everyday life.

"The digital age has now entered the phase of artificial intelligence (AI), and as the e-Governance Academy (eGA) of Estonia has put it, ‘the coming decade will be shaped by the integration of artificial intelligence into governance and everyday life,’" he said.

With digitalisation being another form of the digital age that came earlier, Dr Bawumia asked whether African countries could leapfrog digitalisation to embrace the artificial intelligence phase.

"The short answer," Dr Bawumia noted, "is no," warning that Africa must rather be "very awake to, and fully participate in the artificial intelligence phase of the digital era."

He further pointed out that according to the International Monetary Fund’s AI Preparedness Index (2023), a number of African countries currently most prepared for the AI revolution—including Botswana, Cape Verde, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Morocco, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, Seychelles, Tunisia, and South Africa—are those already advanced in digitalisation.

"It is not a coincidence that these also happen to be amongst the most digitalised countries on the continent," he said.

"Indeed, AI is not possible without data, and a data-based economy is not possible without digitalisation, because without digitalisation you cannot have the massive datasets and computations required for today’s AI models."