This week, the India AI Impact Summit kicks off in New Delhi, the first global AI summit hosted in the Global South. Over 100 countries are represented. And the central question isn't about chatbots or language models.
It's about infrastructure.
Here's a number worth sitting with: $3 trillion. That's the projected global investment in data centers by 2030, according to JLL's latest outlook. Nearly 100 gigawatts of new capacity will be added this decade, effectively doubling what exists today.
Now here's the part that should matter to every business leader in emerging markets:
Africa currently holds less than 0.02% of the world's data centers. South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria house most of them. Meanwhile, AI workloads are increasingly moving closer to users, meaning local infrastructure isn't a luxury anymore. It's a competitive requirement.
Think of it like electricity in the early 1900s. The countries that built power grids first didn't just get lights, they got factories, hospitals, and entire economies.
AI infrastructure is the new grid. Data centers, cloud regions, subsea cables , whoever builds these controls the speed, cost, and accessibility of AI for their entire region.
The India summit is asking the right question: How do we move from ambition to actual assets?
Is your business thinking about where your AI tools are physically hosted, and what that means for speed and cost?
#AI #DigitalInfrastructure #BusinessStrategy #Innovation #Leadership