More than a century after European powers carved up Africa for its land, labour and resources, a new scramble for the continent is taking shape — this time over data, digital infrastructure and technological control. Najm Al-Din examines how Western and Chinese tech giants are competing to dominate Africa’s digital future, raising urgent questions about sovereignty, dependency and who ultimately profits from the continent’s next economic frontier.
Between 1881 and 1914, European powers rapidly invaded, divided and colonised much of Africa.
Driven by industrial expansion, competition for resources and new technological capabilities, this period became known as the “Scramble for Africa”.
At the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, European powers established rules for recognising territorial claims across the continent, formalising an imperial project designed to secure minerals, markets and strategic trade routes.
Colonial rule stripped African societies of resources, subjected millions to forced labour and coerced farmers into producing export crops rather than food for local consumption. In several regions, these policies contributed to severe food insecurity and famine while enriching European states and private companies.
Roads and railways built by colonial powers were frequently designed not to connect African communities with one another, but to transport resources from the interior to ports for export.
Taxation systems also disrupted self-sufficient local economies, while vast tracts of land were transferred to colonial companies and settlers. Existing regional and trans-Saharan trade networks were increasingly redirected towards Europe.
Imperialists such as Cecil Rhodes justified this domination through paternalistic ideas of racial superiority and a supposed “civilising mission”, presenting exploitation as benevolence.
The overtly racial language of colonialism has largely disappeared. But a new scramble for Africa is now emerging as global powers and technology corporations race to build and control the infrastructure underpinning the continent’s digital economy.
The commodity is no longer only land, gold or oil. Increasingly, it is data, connectivity, computing power and technological dependence.
Google’s Equiano subsea cable, connecting parts of Africa with Europe, has been presented as a major investment in expanding internet access and reducing connectivity costs.
But critics of Big Tech’s expanding footprint argue that privately owned digital infrastructure can deepen dependency when African countries do not own or control the systems through which their data travels.
Because Google finances and controls Equiano, the cable forms part of a wider ecosystem in which global technology companies occupy increasingly powerful positions across internet infrastructure, advertising, cloud computing and artificial intelligence.
This raises broader questions about whether Africa is merely being connected to the global digital economy or being incorporated into systems in which much of the economic value generated by African users ultimately flows abroad.
Where access to international bandwidth remains costly, local internet providers can also face structural disadvantages, particularly in markets where infrastructure is concentrated in the hands of a small number of major operators.
The concern is that connectivity may expand without creating equivalent African ownership of the networks that underpin it.
Meta
Similar concerns surround Meta-backed 2Africa, one of the world’s largest subsea cable systems.
Spanning roughly 45,000 kilometres and encircling much of the African continent, 2Africa dramatically expands international bandwidth capacity.
But critics argue that the growing involvement of foreign technology companies in critical communications infrastructure risks concentrating too much power over Africa’s digital backbone in private entities headquartered abroad.
Although expanded bandwidth can reduce costs and improve connectivity, ownership and control remain central questions.
If African operators continue depending on foreign-owned infrastructure, platforms and cloud services, the continent may become increasingly connected while remaining structurally dependent on companies over which African governments have limited influence.
There is also concern that infrastructure built to support expanding cloud computing and artificial intelligence could prioritise the needs of global technology companies over the development of genuinely sovereign domestic digital ecosystems.
SpaceX
SpaceX’s Starlink presents a different model.
By providing internet access directly through low-Earth-orbit satellites, Starlink can reach communities that traditional fibre-optic and mobile infrastructure have struggled to serve.
Its rapid expansion across Africa has therefore been welcomed in areas where reliable broadband remains scarce.
However, its model has also generated concerns over market dominance, regulation and local ownership.
Because Starlink depends comparatively little on domestic terrestrial infrastructure, critics argue that it can expand without producing the same level of investment in locally owned networks.
If satellite broadband becomes heavily concentrated in one foreign provider, African states could find themselves increasingly dependent on an offshore company for critical communications infrastructure.
The broader concern is simple: African countries risk becoming endpoints in networks whose ownership, technology, governance and routing remain largely controlled by foreign private entities.
That echoes earlier extractive models in which African resources generated value elsewhere while local societies retained limited control over the structures governing their own economies.
Data centres
Undersea cables are only one component of Africa’s digital transformation.
Data centres are equally important because they determine where information is stored, processed and commercialised.
If cables carry data, data centres provide the infrastructure that turns that information into cloud services, artificial intelligence and digital economic activity.
Major global cloud companies — often referred to as hyperscalers — have increasingly targeted African technology hubs including South Africa, Kenya and Egypt.
Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud have all expanded their presence on the continent as demand for cloud computing grows.
The concern, however, is that African businesses, governments and users generate enormous quantities of valuable data while much of the infrastructure used to process and monetise that information remains under foreign ownership.
Local companies may become customers of global platforms rather than owners of the technologies underpinning their own economies.
The imbalance becomes even more significant as artificial intelligence develops.
Data generated in African markets can help improve algorithms, products and services owned by multinational corporations. Those companies can then sell advanced cloud, AI and software products back into African markets, often priced in hard foreign currencies.
Local startups must compete against companies with vastly greater access to capital, computing resources and global infrastructure.
The result can be a cycle in which data, talent and economic value flow outward while African governments and companies become increasingly dependent on foreign platforms that control licensing, standards and access.
The digital economy can also reproduce older forms of unequal labour.
African workers are increasingly employed in areas such as content moderation, dataset labelling and other forms of low-paid digital labour that help train and maintain AI systems developed elsewhere.
Meanwhile, large data centres require substantial quantities of electricity and, in some cases, water for cooling. Their expansion can place additional pressure on already strained infrastructure, particularly in regions experiencing electricity shortages or water scarcity.
Where governments grant substantial tax concessions to attract multinational technology firms, questions also arise over whether local economies receive sufficient long-term returns in employment, revenue and technological development.
The Digital Silk Road
Africa is also becoming a major arena in the technological rivalry between China and the West.
Beijing’s Digital Silk Road has made the continent an important part of China’s wider ambition to expand its global technological influence.
Chinese companies such as Huawei have built telecommunications infrastructure across numerous African states, including mobile networks, data centres, smart-city systems and government digital platforms.
Huawei is estimated to have constructed a significant proportion of Africa’s telecommunications infrastructure, including much of its 4G network and a substantial share of emerging 5G systems.
The company has also supplied surveillance technologies, including AI-assisted CCTV and facial-recognition systems, to governments across the continent.
This creates concerns similar to those surrounding Western technology companies: dependency on foreign infrastructure, weak domestic ownership and the possibility that private or state-linked foreign actors may acquire disproportionate influence over critical national systems.
Africa’s rapidly urbanising and overwhelmingly mobile-first population also represents an enormous source of data.
As Chinese AI firms expand internationally, African markets could provide valuable linguistic, behavioural and economic datasets capable of improving Chinese artificial intelligence systems and large language models.
If African startups become heavily dependent on proprietary Chinese software and infrastructure, they risk reproducing the same structural dependency created through Western technology platforms.
Technological dominance can also translate into political leverage.
Companies controlling critical communications infrastructure can gain significant influence over regulation, taxation and procurement, while governments providing major infrastructure investment can acquire broader diplomatic influence.
Africa therefore risks becoming a battleground in a technological contest between Washington and Beijing in which neither side necessarily places African sovereignty at the centre.
Just as earlier colonial powers extracted physical commodities, the new digital economy increasingly revolves around another valuable resource: behavioural, commercial and biometric data.
That information can be collected in Africa, processed elsewhere and used to enrich companies and technological ecosystems headquartered in Silicon Valley, Shenzhen and other global centres of technological power.
Resisting the cycle
Africa does not have to reject foreign technology or investment to resist digital dependency.
The challenge is to ensure that connectivity does not come at the expense of sovereignty.
African governments must invest more aggressively in domestic technology companies, research institutions and digital infrastructure while supporting open-source technologies that reduce dependence on proprietary foreign ecosystems.
Strong data localisation and data-protection frameworks can also ensure that African-generated information is governed primarily in the interests of African societies.
There must also be a continent-wide effort to develop African-language datasets and homegrown AI models.
Without this, Africans risk relying on systems trained overwhelmingly on Western or Asian datasets that may poorly represent the continent’s languages, histories, cultures and social realities.
Greater investment in regional cloud infrastructure, cross-border African connectivity and locally owned data centres would allow more economic value to remain within the continent.
The central question confronting Africa is therefore no longer whether it will participate in the global digital economy. It already does.
The question is whether Africans will own meaningful parts of the infrastructure, data and technologies shaping that future — or whether the continent will once again supply the raw materials for an economic revolution whose greatest rewards are realised elsewhere.
Africa escaped formal colonial rule.
It must now ensure that digital dependence does not become colonialism by another name.
