On Thursday, March 13, 2025, the Minister of Digital Transition and Digitalisation, Ibrahim Kalil Konaté, presented to Prime Minister Beugré Mambé the National Artificial Intelligence and Data Governance Strategy. This opens a new chapter in the digital development of Côte d'Ivoire. Experts who participated in the development of this strategy share here their views on the strengths and weaknesses of this strategy.
Côte d'Ivoire needs more GPUs and supercomputers
Steve Tchouaga, Managing Director of ST Digital, welcomed the initiative. According to him, the roadmap is clear for addressing the major challenges of AI. "It was extremely important for the country to equip itself with a genuine strategy and a clear roadmap to meet these major challenges. We must take ownership of it so that we are in a position to contextualise it and adapt it in an endogenous manner to our needs, cultures and contexts," he said. In his view, the inclusive nature of this strategy, which brings together all ecosystem stakeholders as well as end users, is a masterstroke.
However, he highlights the main challenge, which lies in establishing high-end infrastructure and accelerating the timeline. A five-year horizon seems too slow to him compared to Western standards, where innovation almost never stops. In terms of infrastructure, Côte d'Ivoire has only one supercomputer and very few GPUs, all of which are currently isolated.
GPUs (Graphics Processing Units) are capable of performing billions of calculations per second and are, from this perspective, indispensable for accelerating large and complex AI models. The national datacenter, which is expected to be delivered this April 2025, includes the acquisition of new GPUs to support the strategy's AI initiatives, particularly in the field of agriculture.
The challenge of collecting local data to train local AI models
In this agricultural sector, unlike the fintech sector, the country has a poor database that complicates the development of local AI models. To quote Jacques Gnongui, Technical and Innovation Director at Jool International, "we want data collection tools to be able to train as many models as possible." And only infrastructure can facilitate this task in order to meet the 2030 deadline. Consequently, all stakeholders agree that efforts must be doubled.
Dr. Pandry Ghislain, professor at ESATIC, takes a critical look at the strategy. He acknowledges its ambitious and well-structured nature, built on three pillars: investment, inclusion, and governance. However, he warns against certain limitations, particularly regarding data management.
"Côte d'Ivoire's national strategy for artificial intelligence and data governance is ambitious and multidimensional. It is structured around concrete mechanisms, including the creation of innovation centers and the integration of local skills," he acknowledges.
"However, data management remains open to improvement. The national open data portal represents progress, but the volume and diversity of available data remain limited," he regrets. A visit to the Ivorian open data portal reveals the following: most of the data available on the site has not been updated since 2022, and the categories for which data is available are limited. Dr. Pandry further cautions that the protection of personal data and the training of young people in digital professions must also be ensured.
Opportunities for the Economy and Innovation
For the CEO of INOVYX, Jonathan Kouamé, the national AI strategy is a concrete enabler for enriching products and services in the financial and technology sectors. He believes that this strategy "creates a favourable environment for the adoption of AI, which can enrich our products and services, particularly by integrating advanced features into our multifunctional digital kiosks". He emphasises the importance of investing in skills and infrastructure, the development of sovereign datacenters and cloud solutions, in order to host and secure data locally. This approach, in his view, promotes social inclusion and expands the potential market for digital solutions across the country.