SANDA OJIAMBO, Assistant Secretary-General and CEO of the United Nations Global Compact
The Global Africa Business Initiative (GABI) has shifted its new Digital and Health Action Pathways into a higher gear in order to accelerate the continent’s economic transformation by identifying and driving solutions to problems that slow progress.
Convening on the sidelines of the Africa CEO Forum in Kigali, Rwanda on 15 May, the GABI Solutions Lab challenged some of Africa’s top business leaders to develop an ambitious, actionable work plan to overcome the roadblocks holding the continent back.
“Africa does not face a shortage of ideas, but a significant gap in execution and the financing required to scale solutions,” said Sanda Ojiambo, Assistant Secretary-General and CEO of the United Nations Global Compact. “The GABI Solutions Lab was a focused working session where public and private sector leaders co-developed practical solutions, structured bankable partnerships, and unlocked viable financing pathways that can be advanced immediately. The aim is to ensure that commitments are translated into measurable, real-world outcomes at scale,” she added.
The GABI Action Pathways for Digital Transformation and Health were launched at Unstoppable Africa last September by a coalition of African and global leaders committed to advancing transformation from aspiration to delivery. The Solutions Lab in Kigali advanced and connected those two pathways, using digital technology in health as a practical test case for the broader challenge of bringing private capital into public-interest infrastructure at scale. As co-architects of solutions, participants worked through the specific conditions that would make each challenge bankable and implementable, drawing on real-world scenarios presented by public and private sector leaders.
Among the key discussion themes were how to accelerate investment in digital public infrastructure, connectivity, skills, and governance to ensure that AI becomes a force multiplier for African development; how to reduce the adoption timeline for proven infrastructure solutions; and how to deploy financing models for sovereign digital infrastructure at scale across multiple African markets.
Caitlin Burton, CEO of AI and robotics company Zipline Africa, headquartered in Rwanda, highlighted the need to move beyond pilot programmes towards the scaled implementation of proven technologies. “Across much of Africa, adoption is still moving at the pace of traditional aid cycles and public sector implementation timelines rather than the speed of modern technology deployment. We need financing models, incentives, accountability mechanisms, and partnerships that can collapse the adoption timeline for proven infrastructure from decades to years and create greater urgency for action,” she said.
Kate Kallot, Founder and CEO of Kenya-based data infrastructure company, Amini, emphasized the importance of sovereign AI infrastructure and digital capability development across the continent, saying, “Many developers and builders across the continent lack the tools or access required to build solutions that reflect local realities. The lack of data is a symptom of a much larger digital divide, including limited connectivity and infrastructure gaps. The challenge now is how to deploy financing models for sovereign digital infrastructure at scale, across multiple markets, in a way that delivers real capability into the hands of governments and citizens within the next 12 months.”
Nigeria’s Federal Minister of Communications and Digital Economy Bosun Tijani, spoke about the speed of AI adoption. “Without meaningful connectivity, skilled people, and governance systems that can support adoption at scale, we risk falling further behind. The real challenge is not whether Africa will adopt AI, but whether we have built the absorptive capacity required to use it to transform our economies and key sectors,” he said.
Senior industry leaders from the Aig-Imoukhuede Foundation, Afreximbank, Ecobank, McKinsey, PMI, mPedigree, ServiceNow, Safaricom, and the United Nations were also present to drive the transformation conversation.
Now in its fifth year, GABI is a global platform that brings together business leaders, policymakers, and investors to drive Africa’s economic growth. It is built on a simple premise: Africa’s potential is unlocked when public ambition aligns with private capital — and that happens by doing business with Africa, not just in Africa.
Unstoppable Africa, GABI’s flagship event, will take place at the Marriott Marquis in New York on 20-21 September. Follow the latest developments at Unstoppable Africa – YouTube .
For more information on the Global Africa Business Initiative, visit gabi.unglobalcompact.org/.
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