Samaila Zubairu: AI alone can’t formalise Africa’s economy

Speaking alongside the heads of AfDB and Afreximbank at AFIS 2026 in Luanda, Angola, Samaila Zubairu, chief executive officer of Africa Finance Corporation (AFC), warned that artificial intelligence and digital apps cannot formalise the continent’s shadow economy without massive investment in basic physical infrastructure. GODFREY GEORGE reports 

The persistent belief across Africa’s technology ecosystem that digital platforms and artificial intelligence can leapfrog traditional industrialisation collided with hard realities on Tuesday inside the plenary halls of the Africa Financial Summit (AFIS) in Luanda, Angola.

Addressing financial leaders on his panel, “Capital Architecture: A New Age for African Finance,” Zubairu warned that tech alone cannot formalise the continent’s massive informal economy.

Software applications, Zubairu argued, are rendered practically useless when businesses lack fundamental physical utilities like electricity, storage, and transport networks.

Responding to panel discussions on digitisation and emerging technological disruption, Zubairu noted that while artificial intelligence presents tangible risks to current labour markets, it cannot operate in a vacuum.

For technology to drive real economic formalisation, it requires foundational enablers that cannot be coded.

“AI is a threat, but it will not work in isolation,” Zubairu said. “It requires other supporting elements, including digital service provision, accessible land titles, effective tax systems, training systems, digital access to government services, and the infrastructure needed to support businesses.”

Zubairu pointed out that economies such as China managed to formalise vast informal sectors not merely by deploying administrative mandates or digital tools, but by building the physical infrastructure that drastically lowers the cost of doing business.

In Africa, where the informal sector accounts for about 83% of total employment, attempting to digitise small enterprises without reliable electricity, warehousing, cold chains, and telecommunications networks will not lift productivity.

According to the AFC chief, African policymakers and investors must step back from isolated interventions and embrace comprehensive industrial master planning.

Rather than treating infrastructure developments as stand-alone engineering projects, Zubairu argued that policymakers must deliberately plan entire regional ecosystems around them.

He pointed to the multi-billion-dollar Lobito Corridor—a strategic railway project connecting the mineral-rich belts of the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia to Angola’s Atlantic port—as a prime example of an asset that must serve a broader economic purpose.

Instead of functioning merely as another extractive conduit for shipping unrefined raw materials to overseas buyers, Zubairu insisted that the corridor be leveraged to anchor regional processing, local agricultural distribution, and cross-border energy trade.

“We should be thinking about agricultural value chains, the mining sector, and the other industries that can develop around it,” Zubairu said.

“We should be thinking about the amount of energy that will be required within that economic zone and whether we should be creating an integrated energy hub. We should consider how electricity generated in Angola can reach the wider region, and we should also ensure that the minerals extracted are processed within the region, rather than simply exporting raw materials.”

Zubairu added that industrial planning must also extend to urbanisation, cautioning that large-scale infrastructure projects will inevitably attract human migration.

Without proactive planning, emerging transport and mining hubs risk turning into unplanned urban slums rather than structured, productive commercial centres.

The debate underscored a broader institutional dilemma, as highlighted by the panel’s moderator: the divergent speeds at which African development is currently moving.

While tech entrepreneurs operate on an accelerated digital timeline and development financiers coordinate cross-border capital, bureaucratic state machinery often operates at an excruciatingly slow pace.

As the AFC, AfDB, and Afreximbank attempt to build a unified African Financial Architecture for Development, the consensus delivered in Luanda was uncompromising. 

For Africa’s technology sector, the lesson is clear: apps and algorithms cannot substitute for power plants, freight rails, and factories. 

Until the hard, physical back end of the continent’s economy is built, the promise of digital formalisation will remain unfulfilled.