Connected Africa Summit 2026: The Summit That Told Itself the Truth
The Connected Africa Summit has been running since 2009. Like many high-level digital economy gatherings, it has produced its share of joint statements, shared commitments and resolutions that sound strong in the room, but unfortunately lose force before they reach implementation. That is why the pre-summit message from Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Information, Communications and the Digital Economy, the Hon.William Kabogo Gitau, E.G.H. , was significant. When he said, plainly, “This year, delivery has to become measurable,” he acknowledged the gap between ambition and execution. That takes great political courage. You do not choose such a direct framing if you believe the last decade of communiqués has already delivered what it promised.
CAS2024 was themed "Shaping the Future of a Connected Africa: Unlocking Growth Beyond Connectivity." CAS2025 followed with "The Digital Journey: Vision to Reality." CAS2026 planted its flag on measurable delivery, implementation, and sustained action. Track that sequence and something becomes clear: the summit is making a remarkably honest admission that actual outcomes have not been moving fast enough. Shifting from "vision to reality" to "delivery has to become measurable" is an institution putting itself on notice.
Every previous edition of this summit ended with a communique. CAS2025 produced the Diani Resolutions, a joint commitment to deepen digital cooperation across the continent. The language was on point but was the institutional engine to drive it was not in place. The headline structural outcome of CAS2026 was the launch of the Connected Africa Secretariat, chaired by Kenya: a permanent coordination body, not a steering committee that dissolves when the conference ends. Its mandate is continuity across borders and across election cycles. ICT Authority CEO Jessy Maruti named the problem it exists to solve: "Africa cannot fully unlock its digital potential while operating in fragmented systems. We must build stronger continental connectivity and harmonised frameworks that allow data, services and innovation to move seamlessly across borders." Kabogo went further: "The rules that will govern Africa's digital economy for the next decade, on artificial intelligence, cross-border data, and digital trade, are being written now. Africa needs to write those rules, not inherit them." That last line is a political argument as much as a digital one. The countries that write the regulatory frameworks first set the defaults. Arriving late means inheriting someone else's assumptions about your own data. Part of what sharpened the tone in that room was commercial pressure, not political will alone. Eng.John Kipchumba Tanui, CBS cited McKinsey research showing that scaled deployment of generative AI and cloud technologies could unlock between $65 billion and $130 billion in additional annual economic value across Africa. The same McKinsey report found that more than 40 per cent of African institutions have already begun experimenting with or implementing generative AI solutions, before the policy framework has caught up with them. Deemah AlYahya , Secretary-General of the Digital Cooperation Organisation, told delegates that Africa's digital economy could grow from $20 billion to $70 billion by 2031, if countries reduce fragmentation. Kenya's own infrastructure programme shows what the accelerated version looks like on the ground. The government partnered with Kenya Power in 2024 to run fibre along existing electrical transmission infrastructure, cutting deployment costs from around KES 2.3 million per kilometre to KES 600,000. The 2025/2026 national budget allocated KES 12.7 billion to the digital superhighway initiative, with the World Bank approving a further KES 58.3 billion to lay roughly 1,270 kilometres of fibre into Kenya's underserved northern region. Tanui did not present this as a finished story: "There are still communities where fibre has not reached, regions where connectivity remains unreliable, and citizens who remain digitally excluded." Deputy President of Kenya, Prof. Kithure Kindiki set the tone from the top:For a head of state-level address, that is leadership worth paying attention to.
Safaricom's Chief Enterprise Business Officer Frankline Okata arrived with a concrete example rather than a principle: "Across Africa, the conversation is shifting from ideas to execution, from pilots to scale, and from isolated systems to integrated digital ecosystems that create measurable impact. Our collaboration with ICT Authority demonstrates what is possible when public and private sector players work together to accelerate national digitisation." Huawei Kenya's Policy and Partnerships Lead Adam Lane named the constraint that infrastructure investment alone does not fix: "Africa's digital transformation must be powered not only by technology, but by skilled people who can build, manage and innovate with it." Kenya has laid 30,000 kilometres of new fibre towards a target of 100,000. Tanzania, Rwanda and others are accelerating their own backbone programmes.
The summit's agenda had a thread running through it that did not always get named directly but was present in almost every session: the growing role of outsourced services in delivering Africa's digital ambitions at scale. Cybersecurity was day one's headline topic, and the conversation kept returning to outsourced Security Operations Centres as a practical route for governments and enterprises that cannot build that capability in-house. AI-powered contact centres, data annotation, content moderation, and KYC verification all featured as live service lines rather than future possibilities. The multilingual dimension came up repeatedly: a continent with accelerating fintech adoption and deeply diverse language populations needs customer support infrastructure that reflects that reality.
The talent story is no longer a projection. Africa has a young, technically literate workforce already delivering BPO and ITO services to clients in Europe, the Americas, and the Gulf, competing on quality, time zone proximity, and language range. What harmonised frameworks and a functioning Secretariat mean for BPO and ITO operators specifically is this: a single regulatory environment across borders makes it possible to build delivery operations that serve multiple African markets from one location, without rebuilding compliance architecture from scratch for each jurisdiction. That is not a marginal efficiency. For operators with the seats, the certifications, and the language capacity already in place, it is the difference between a regional opportunity and a continental one.
The summit has now put measurability at the centre of the agenda, and that gives CAS2027 a clear opportunity: to return not only with fresh commitments, but with evidence of progress. By the time delegates reconvene, the strongest signal will be whether this year’s ambition has translated into practical coordination, implemented trade frameworks, and visible tracking of Africa’s AI opportunity. Has the Secretariat moved from guidance to working protocols? Have the AfCFTA Digital Trade Protocol annexes advanced from policy commitment into real-world application? And has the $65 billion AI opportunity begun to be measured against a credible baseline? These are the questions that can turn the summit from a platform for alignment into a real mechanism for delivery.
World Bank Country Director Qimiao Fan ’s call for policy harmonisation and deeper investment in digital skills brought the summit back to its central point: Africa’s digital future will depend on whether infrastructure, regulation, talent and services can advance together. CAS2026 showed that many of those pieces are already moving. Fibre networks are expanding, AI experimentation is accelerating, public-private partnerships are becoming more practical, and digital service capacity is maturing across the continent.
The significance of the Connected Africa Secretariat is that it gives this momentum a place to be coordinated beyond the summit itself. By CAS2027, the measure of progress should be visible not only in new commitments, but in clearer cross-border rules, stronger institutional coordination, better-aligned investment, deeper skills pipelines and more scalable service capacity. That is the real promise of CAS2026: a shift from continental ambition to the disciplined work of making Africa’s digital economy easier to build, govern and scale.
If you’d like to continue the conversation or explore what this shift might mean for your organisation, our team is always open to connecting - click through to CEO George Jabesh or EU Marketing Director Chris Hague .