Speaking alongside the heads of AfDB and Afreximbank at AFIS 2026 in Luanda, Angola, Samaila Zubairu, chief govt officer of Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), warned that synthetic intelligence and digital apps can not formalise the continent’s shadow economy with out large funding in fundamental bodily infrastructure. GODFREY GEORGE stories
The persistent perception throughout Africa’s know-how ecosystem that digital platforms and synthetic intelligence can leapfrog conventional industrialisation collided with laborious realities on Tuesday contained in the plenary halls of the Africa Financial Summit (AFIS) in Luanda, Angola.
Addressing monetary leaders on his panel, “Capital Architecture: A New Age for African Finance,” Zubairu warned that tech alone can not formalise the continent’s large casual economy.
Software functions, Zubairu argued, are rendered virtually ineffective when companies lack elementary bodily utilities like electrical energy, storage, and transport networks.
Responding to panel discussions on digitisation and rising technological disruption, Zubairu famous that whereas synthetic intelligence presents tangible dangers to present labour markets, it can not function in a vacuum.
For know-how to drive actual financial formalisation, it requires foundational enablers that can’t be coded.
“AI is a threat, but it will not work in isolation,” Zubairu stated. “It requires other supporting elements, including digital service provision, accessible land titles, effective tax systems, training systems, digital access to government services, and the infrastructure needed to support businesses.”
Zubairu identified that economies reminiscent of China managed to formalise huge casual sectors not merely by deploying administrative mandates or digital instruments, however by constructing the bodily infrastructure that drastically lowers the price of doing enterprise.
In Africa, the place the casual sector accounts for about 83% of complete employment, trying to digitise small enterprises with out reliable electricity, warehousing, chilly chains, and telecommunications networks is not going to carry productiveness.
According to the AFC chief, African policymakers and traders should step again from remoted interventions and embrace complete industrial grasp planning.
Rather than treating infrastructure developments as stand-alone engineering tasks, Zubairu argued that policymakers should intentionally plan whole regional ecosystems round them.
He pointed to the multi-billion-dollar Lobito Corridor—a strategic railway venture connecting the mineral-rich belts of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia to Angola’s Atlantic port—as a chief instance of an asset that should serve a broader financial goal.
Instead of functioning merely as one other extractive conduit for delivery unrefined uncooked supplies to abroad patrons, Zubairu insisted that the hall be leveraged to anchor regional processing, native agricultural distribution, and cross-border power commerce.
“We should be thinking about agricultural value chains, the mining sector, and the other industries that can develop around it,” Zubairu stated.
“We should be thinking about the amount of energy that will be required within that economic zone and whether we should be creating an integrated energy hub. We should consider how electricity generated in Angola can reach the wider region, and we should also ensure that the minerals extracted are processed within the region, rather than simply exporting raw materials.”
Zubairu added that industrial planning should additionally lengthen to urbanisation, cautioning that large-scale infrastructure tasks will inevitably appeal to human migration.
Without proactive planning, rising transport and mining hubs danger turning into unplanned city slums quite than structured, productive industrial centres.
The debate underscored a broader institutional dilemma, as highlighted by the panel’s moderator: the divergent speeds at which African growth is at present shifting.
While tech entrepreneurs function on an accelerated digital timeline and growth financiers coordinate cross-border capital, bureaucratic state equipment typically operates at an excruciatingly sluggish tempo.
As the AFC, AfDB, and Afreximbank try to construct a unified African Financial Architecture for Development, the consensus delivered in Luanda was uncompromising.
For Africa’s know-how sector, the lesson is evident: apps and algorithms can not substitute for energy vegetation, freight rails, and factories.
Until the laborious, bodily again finish of the continent’s economy is constructed, the promise of digital formalisation will stay unfulfilled.
