With a billion mobile phone users and a median population age of 19, Africa isn’t catching up to the AI revolution — it’s writing an entirely different playbook, says business leader Hardy Pemhiwa. He shows how a generation of entrepreneurs is using AI to teach classes, triage patients and boost farm yields through the power of local compute, local data and local languages. (Recorded at TEDAI Vienna on September 26, 2025)
Join us in person at a TED conference:
Become a TED Member to support our mission:
Subscribe to a TED newsletter:
Follow TED!
X:
Instagram:
Facebook:
LinkedIn:
TikTok:
The TED Talks channel features talks, performances and original series from the world’s leading thinkers and doers. Subscribe to our channel for videos on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and more. Visit to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more.
Watch more:
TED’s videos may be used for non-commercial purposes under a Creative Commons License, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives (or the CC BY – NC – ND 4.0 International) and in accordance with our TED Talks Usage Policy: . For more information on using TED for commercial purposes (e.g. employee learning, in a film or online course), please submit a Media Request at
#TED #TEDTalks #Technology
@nurnuralom7010
January 15, 2026 at 11:02 am
❤❤❤❤❤
@nurnuralom7010
January 15, 2026 at 11:02 am
First comment
@Abdullahariyan-p1z
January 15, 2026 at 11:03 am
❤❤❤❤
@0000Mojo0000
January 15, 2026 at 11:18 am
Imagine all the water and energy they’d have if they weren’t forced to use AI to better their lives. Good for them that corpos can’t build affordable data centers there.
@deepanshukumar9649
January 15, 2026 at 12:47 pm
Moreover as his examples states ppl have to do multiple jobs, not one.
@Max-hj6nq
January 15, 2026 at 7:50 pm
search up closed loop water cooling systems for data centres.
@Dhurjati-Ai
January 15, 2026 at 11:22 am
Fascinating! I wish African AI entrepreneurs all the best!
@LeandromartinDoello
January 15, 2026 at 11:30 am
Hello habeeb bello My friend
@RoelCandaele
January 15, 2026 at 11:44 am
Quesen 😂😂😂
@felixccaa
January 15, 2026 at 11:45 am
gigantomania out of Afrika – is this US-driven investment?
Afrika would have had the huge advantage NOT to do the same than Europe and USA did
@thierryvankerm8474
January 15, 2026 at 12:02 pm
TED acting again as AI-washing agent
@austinbraswell189
January 15, 2026 at 12:14 pm
AI is a scourge on humanity. It should be condemned and those who use it and profit from it should be prosecuted for perpetuating evil
@plasmaburndeath
January 15, 2026 at 12:59 pm
FFS stop it with the AI slop shoved down everyone’s throats!, Can’t even escape it by going to Africa now lol. I have to check with the Amish on what BS Ai Solar powered electric Fences we are selling them. (and Yes some Amish do use solar powered electric fences)
AI isn’t ‘teaching’ anything, as it doesn’t ‘know’ anything (ask it it will admit it) it is a LLM large language model, like a fancy weather forecast model and sufferers all the issues of one. Change your grammar, your wording, when something is brought up in an ai conversation the answer changes, even on things that shouldn’t be debatable.
During testing I have had model say 100% Yes on a concept Invention, and then later same test change wording slightly, when variables are discussed, or get unlucky and AI picked a different ‘MODE’ during this next conversation and got a 100% NO on same concept.
One tiny extra space, one tiny eggcorn of a word, one misunderstood words meaning (which some words do change meaning) depending on who is speaking them, go ask Churchill about ‘Tabling an issue’ and ask the Americans about it, even that doesn’t mean same thing.
Only way the current system can be useful is to make constraints on the users (not the system) to use MATHS like rules and orders of operations that are SET, X Y Z. So then the few people who can break their minds to follow ridged rules for asking a system a question can have higher confidence in response and less hallucination. But right now it is just a Tax Payer funded socialism for the rich going on. We pay for them to build giant data centers, we pay for the water, we pay extra for electric bill even though we are not ones using more power, on and on. Oh we pay for our shared reality crumbling before our very eyes.
@philiphochendoner2540
January 15, 2026 at 1:55 pm
So much AI content and I’m over it. Sigh. Used to be a great place to learn
@williamnelson5549
January 15, 2026 at 2:00 pm
Jesus Christ the Ai slop needs to fucking end. It is soooooo freaking annoying and infuriating having it constantly shoved in your damn face.
@geoms6263
January 15, 2026 at 5:15 pm
What a gullible man. Doesn’t he see the future as a fusion of high technology and total social degradation (High Tech, Low Life)?
Africa, with its weak regulations, creative chaos and brutal demographic pressure, is the perfect place where human “inhibitors” (laws, ethics, human rights) are eliminated.
In my view, where the state is weak, AI can develop more wildly, turning the population into “experimental meat” necessary for raw technical evolution.
@sonias9722
January 16, 2026 at 5:46 am
Can you explain that a little further?
@geoms6263
January 16, 2026 at 7:49 pm
@sonias9722 Where there are no regulations, technology does not have to “ask permission.” It can develop wildly, transforming society into a huge laboratory, without moral barriers. The term “experimental meat” reflects the idea that, in a future dominated by AI, human biology becomes irrelevant, being just a raw resource. In a region with high demographic pressure and few rules, the population becomes an infinite source of data, genetic tests, and social experiments needed to “feed” the algorithm. The suffering of the individual no longer matters, only the efficiency of the system. Technology advances exponentially (AI, biotechnology, surveillance), while the quality of human life declines because the system no longer needs “happy people” to function.
@geoms6263
January 15, 2026 at 5:32 pm
Africa is not a laboratory because it is “promising”, but because it is ungovernable and vulnerable, which makes it the ideal place where Technocapitalism can “eat” reality without being disturbed by the moral bureaucracy of the West.
@Jasonxbr
January 15, 2026 at 5:46 pm
Technically just use knowledge that was passed down or recorded by farmers as well the data from climate changes in your area from season to season. No AI needed especially from the the beginning of modern civilization. AI itself, its just another bust in tech that only the top benefits financially and the rest of it is just a over consumption of power, water, pollution, waste, added with the E- waste to mine, produce, ship, distribution, deploy, maintain, eventually obsolete, just a waste land of data centers savage by thieves and opportunistic. Just another man creation of our modern living. 😢😢😢😢😢 bty they don’t create new jobs. Just the installation and deployment.
@liquidbraino
January 15, 2026 at 6:14 pm
Africa is going to catch up to the AI revolution as soon as they can figure out a way to use it to scam people out of their money – and they will.
@anon-i6p
January 15, 2026 at 7:15 pm
It’s refreshing to see a TED like this. Informative, interesting, entertaining, articulate, intelligent, well-researched, well-presented.
I don’t fully agree with this wonderfully optimistic appraisal for the future of AI or for the future of Africa – I feel there was some cherrypicking and handwaving of the facts, a little too much unfounded hope, a few carefully avoided flaws – but the point is that this talk was provocative enough to get me on topic, to teach me something and to get me looking for supporting/contrary arguments on my own.
Too many TEDs are just (ab)used as standup platforms for not-very-smart people with not-very-smart ideas, for political rants, for self-aggrandizement, for social media likes, for all manner of fools who wouldn’t be granted an audience anywhere else. This isn’t one of those useless TEDs by useless people – thank you.
@nathanpoako
January 15, 2026 at 7:56 pm
Not even going to watch this and say FCK OFF with regard to AI trying to replace creative jobs, not “create” them.
@humanemaths
January 15, 2026 at 9:30 pm
Amazing!
I loved how he described Africa because this is how I respond when people say India! India is a huge country
@ignalibe
January 15, 2026 at 9:58 pm
is yemurai real? all those images are AI generated
@gsport5828
January 16, 2026 at 12:23 am
Yemurai🎉💥
@Pietro-th1yd
January 16, 2026 at 3:55 am
Is this supposed to be an Ad or what?
@mayavoynovska661
January 16, 2026 at 4:39 am
Sir, you have mentioned youth unemployment in Africa as top problem even as worse than diseases, wars… how will AI help you with unemployment? Because unemployment here shows unemployment from political point of view not from human’s point of view; The government will have AI to do all the work and the problem with unemployment for any government is solved, not to mention that all the work and effort done by humanity is being transferred into those giant data centres where you manipulate all of the HUMAN’S POWER – KNOWLEDGE, built through centuries; It is a huge crime among many others over humanity and human rights. You are destroying a whole world not building better for humanity but better for the minority – perfection does not exist even in AI’s world so therefore JUSTICE will be served and it will be far worse than what is happening now to humanity; you are creating disaster after disaster with AI because HUMANS KNOWLEDGE HAS THE REAL POWER IN HUMANITY, never in artificial world or worlds you are now building.
@lifemotivation6789
January 16, 2026 at 7:18 am
Africa didn’t wait to be included. It built its own digital future
@stickman4087
January 16, 2026 at 4:51 pm
So how long will it take to build Wakanda?
@rameshg2717
January 17, 2026 at 12:03 am
Ai is great when u have nothing to lose or when u have everything..