Summary: AfDB, UNDP, and the AI Hub for Sustainable Development launched an initiative at the Nairobi AI Forum to mobilize up to $10 billion by 2035. Their targets include 40 million jobs, with UNDP citing up to 45 million, plus an estimated $1 trillion in incremental African GDP.
The Nairobi AI Forum convened on February 9–10, 2026, drawing more than 500 government, private sector, and investor delegates from Africa, Europe, and the G7. Kenya and Italy co-chaired the event with UNDP, and the biggest news to come out of the two days was the launch of the “AI 10 Billion Initiative”: an effort led by the African Development Bank (AfDB), UNDP, and the AI Hub for Sustainable Development to mobilize as much as $10 billion by 2035 in support of AI-driven digital transformation across African countries.
The lens is the story here. While most AI news coverage orbits frontier model races and US-China export controls, this forum cast AI as a development instrument. By 2035, the initiative is meant to deliver 40 million jobs (UNDP materials put the ceiling at 45 million) and an estimated $1 trillion in incremental African GDP over the same horizon. For developers and startups in the Global South, no comparably concrete funding and compute signal is on the table for the decade ahead.
The Road to Nairobi
Nothing about the forum was improvised. It sits inside Italy’s Mattei Plan for Africa, and the AI Hub for Sustainable Development had been operating from Rome since June 2025, set up by the Kenyan and Italian governments alongside UNDP. The calendar was deliberate too: the gathering was placed ahead of both the Italy–Africa Summit in Ethiopia and the AI Impact Summit in India, which makes Nairobi the opening stop on a diplomatic chain.
The speakers mirrored that shift in posture. Philip Thigo, Kenya’s Special Envoy on Technology, framed the partnership as “evolving beyond traditional aid towards the co-creation of future economic capability.” Vincenzo Del Monaco, Italy’s ambassador to Kenya, put it more bluntly: cooperation is “moving from dialogue to delivery.” The organizers’ intent was explicit — leave the aid narrative behind and talk about investment and joint industrial building instead.
Three Numbers to Anchor the Plan
Strip the initiative down and three figures hold it up. First, $10 billion: not a one-time grant but a phased mobilization target pulling on development finance, private capital, and partner governments. Second, 40 million jobs: the AfDB’s 2035 target, with UNDP’s press release going with “up to 45 million.” Third, $1 trillion: the estimated incremental GDP that AI could add to the continent by 2035.
Those figures trace to actual analysis rather than aspiration. The initiative builds on an AfDB report published in June 2025, which sketched a three-phase AI-readiness roadmap and named five enablers: data, computing capacity, skills, trust, and capital. Every work pillar in the initiative answers back to that diagnosis.
How the $10 Billion Gets Deployed
Funding runs along five tracks. AI entrepreneurship support leads, as the engine behind the jobs target. Regional data infrastructure follows, including cross-border “data embassies” for core data facilities. Policy frameworks come third, helping national governments stand governance up. Skills development is fourth, aimed at the gaps the report identified. Financing instruments close the list, with equity and debt placed directly into proof-of-concept projects.
Nicholas Williams, division manager for ICT operations at AfDB, told the launch that the initiative “paves the way for expanded partnerships and sustained investment” in AI entrepreneurship, data, and infrastructure ecosystems. The next step is already scheduled: AfDB will run a 10-month roadshow, negotiating new partnerships country by country with governments, private-sector players, and development partners.
Beyond the Headline: Compute, Agriculture, Security
The $10 billion plan was not the forum’s only output. On compute, Italian supercomputing consortium Cineca committed 1.5 million GPU hours to 130 African innovators, with AWS and Microsoft supplying cloud credits earmarked for climate resilience, voice AI in local languages, and food security. On agriculture, Kenya’s Ministry of Agriculture and the Kenyan Space Agency lead a “Space-Enabled AI for Food Security” program backed by the Italian Space Agency, FAO, NASA Harvest, and Microsoft — a national geospatial data foundation serving crop mapping, yield forecasting, and climate risk detection. On security, Cyber 4.0 and the AI Hub opened a call for African AI startups on secure-by-design practices, with the cybersecurity training center Cisco operates in Nairobi taking part. Private capital moved as well: Harmonic Innovation Group launched the H-ASAP startup accelerator and activated the Harmonic Fund venture platform, seeded with an initial €50 million envelope.
What This Means for Builders and Product Teams
Three practical takeaways. First, the funding path now has edges: equity-plus-debt proof-of-concept financing, combined with a 10-month official roadshow, hands Africa-focused AI startups a visible application channel starting in 2026. Second, compute remains the hard bottleneck: 1.5 million GPU hours spread across 130 teams and consumed over a year covers prototyping and small-scale training only — anyone building foundation models in Africa still needs external capacity. Third, the priority domains come pre-named: local-language voice AI, climate resilience, food security, and agricultural geospatial analytics. That is where the policy money flows, and where the product whitespace runs widest.