Build Africa's Shared Compute & AI Infrastructure

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Contribute to BUILD 2026

BUILD 2026 invites researchers, academics, practitioners, doctoral researchers and emerging scholars to submit abstracts that contribute to the conversation around Africa’s shared compute and AI infrastructure future.

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Conference Overview

Build First

Africa’s artificial intelligence revolution will not be imported. It must be built, starting with the physical and digital infrastructure that enables sovereign AI development. The continent is home to 18% of the world’s population, yet accounts for less than 1% of global research and development expenditure, and African languages represent a mere 0.02% of internet content. Only approximately 5% of Africa’s AI practitioners have access to the compute infrastructure required to train models, run experiments, and develop applications. Nigeria alone spends approximately USD 850 million annually on foreign cloud services. These are not market failures to be managed; they are infrastructure deficits to be closed.

BUILD 2026 is convened on a single foundational principle: before Africa can govern, commercialise, or ethically deploy artificial intelligence at scale, it must first build, own, and operate the infrastructure that makes AI possible. This entails reliable power systems, AI-ready data centres, high-performance computing clusters, fibre backbone expansion, and the institutional mechanisms that govern them. It also means indigenous data systems, multilingual training pipelines, and compute allocation frameworks that serve African populations rather than extract from them.

We invite researchers, engineers, policymakers, and innovators to submit work that directly confronts the infrastructure question. We seek evidence on how to build, not only why it matters.

Build Conference is hosted by the Nigeria AI Collective, under the leadership of the Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy.

Thematic Tracks

Building from the Ground Up

Each track assumes the infrastructure build as its starting point and asks what that specific domain contributes to, or demands from, the build.

The Physical and Digital Build

The foundational track. Submissions must address the design, deployment, financing, or governance of the physical systems that make AI possible in Africa.

  • Data centre architecture, cooling, and resilience in tropical climates
  • High-performance computing (HPC) and GPU cluster deployment for African research institutions
  • National cloud platforms and the transition from foreign cloud dependency to sovereign infrastructure
  • Fibre backbone expansion, last-mile connectivity, and the economics of rural broadband
  • Energy systems for compute: grid stability, renewable integration, and off-grid solutions
  • Regional shared-compute architectures and cross-border data corridor governance
  • The role of Project BRIDGE, NCAIR, Ghana’s National AI Computing Centre, and comparable national build-outs.

Financing and Valuing the Build

This track examines how infrastructure investment is financed, appraised, and monetised across African economies.

  • Financing models for AI infrastructure: sovereign bonds, DFIs, blended finance, and private capital
  • Cost-benefit analysis of compute infrastructure at national and sectoral levels
  • The economic case for shifting from cloud consumption to cloud ownership in African markets
  • Job creation, job displacement, and workforce transition in infrastructure construction and operation
  • Digital value retention: ensuring that revenues from African data and AI services remain on the continent
  • Investment appraisal frameworks for development finance institutions targeting African AI infrastructure

The Build as Sovereignty

This track analyses how infrastructure ownership reshapes Africa’s position in global power dynamics.

  • Digital sovereignty: definitions, strategies, and trade-offs for African states building independent compute capacity
  • The geopolitics of strategic minerals (lithium, cobalt, rare earths) in global AI hardware supply chains
  • Africa’s collective bargaining power in multilateral forums, and how sovereign infrastructure strengthens it
  • The role of AfCFTA in creating a unified African digital market and regulatory space
  • Strategic partnerships with China, the EU, and the United States: technology transfer, conditionalities, and risks
  • The African Declaration on Artificial Intelligence (2025) and the operationalisation of the proposed $60 billion Africa AI Fund

Building for Inclusion

This track centres equity in the infrastructure build. It asks who benefits, who is excluded, and how to design systems that serve all.
  • Indigenous data sovereignty: community-owned data trusts, consent frameworks, and benefit-sharing mechanisms
  • African language representation in training data and the technical infrastructure required to build multilingual models
  • Gender equity in infrastructure construction, operation, and leadership
  • Disability inclusion and accessible design in AI infrastructure deployment
  • Compute allocation justice: who gets access to scarce GPU resources, and on what basis?
  • Bottom-up innovation: how informal sector actors and rural communities are building infrastructure without institutional support

Building the Rules Alongside the Roads

This track addresses the institutional architecture that must be built concurrently with physical infrastructure.

  • Regulatory frameworks for data centre operation, cross-border data flows, and national cloud governance
  • Algorithmic accountability and audit mechanisms for AI systems deployed on African infrastructure
  • The operationalisation of Nigeria’s National AI Strategy and comparable strategies as build-out roadmaps
  • The role of national regulatory bodies (NITDA, data protection authorities, central banks) in governing infrastructure assets
  • Ethical AI procurement standards for governments investing in sovereign compute
  • The intersection of infrastructure governance with customary law, community norms, and existing legal traditions

From Infrastructure to Enterprise

This track explores how research and commercial infrastructure connect labour, capital, and ideas to scalable outcomes.

  • University-industry linkages and the transfer of AI research from lab to market
  • Intellectual property regimes for AI in Africa: patents, open-source licensing, and traditional knowledge protection
  • Venture capital, angel investment, and patient capital for infrastructure-dependent startups
  • The role of incubators, accelerators, and innovation hubs in nurturing AI entrepreneurship
  • Compute-credit schemes and shared GPU access for early-stage innovators
  • Case studies of African AI solutions that have achieved product-market fit at scale, and the infrastructure that enabled them.
Submit Abstract Now

The central research questions guiding BUILD 2026 include:

  • What are the technical, financial, and governance pathways to building Africa-owned compute infrastructure (from data centres and GPU clusters to national cloud platforms and edge networks)?
  • How do we finance the build? What models (public investment, DFIs, sovereign wealth, private capital, or blended finance) can close the infrastructure gap at the speed and scale required?
  • What energy systems are required to power AI infrastructure sustainably in African climates, and how do we integrate renewable sources into compute operations without compromising reliability?
  • How do we build indigenous data infrastructure (collection systems, annotation pipelines, language corpora, and sovereign data trusts) so that African AI models are trained on African data under African governance?
  • What institutional and regulatory frameworks must be built alongside physical infrastructure to ensure that compute assets are governed transparently, accountably, and in the public interest?
  • How do AI and compute Infrastructure translate into economic value? What evidence links compute infrastructure investment to GDP growth, industrial competitiveness, and high-value employment in African economies?
  • What are the geopolitical implications of Africa building its own AI infrastructure? How does sovereign compute strengthen continental bargaining power in global technology markets?
  • How do we ensure that infrastructure build-out does not replicate existing inequalities? What mechanisms guarantee equitable access to computing skills and the economic returns of AI across gender, region, language, and ability?
  • What are the pathways from research infrastructure to commercial enterprise? How do we connect university labs, national research clusters, and startup ecosystems to the compute they need to innovate?
  • How do we build the human infrastructure (the technical workforce, the policy capacity, and the institutional memory) to operate and maintain AI systems over the long term?

Submission Types

Type A: Extended Abstract

Authors are invited to submit an extended abstract of 1,000–1,500 words.

Extended abstracts should present sufficiently developed original empirical, theoretical, conceptual, policy or computational research relevant to the BUILD 2026 theme and one or more of the conference tracks.

Submissions should go substantially beyond a conventional abstract. They should clearly establish the research problem, relevant literature or conceptual foundation, methodology or analytical approach, emerging or expected findings, and the contribution of the work to Africa’s AI and compute infrastructure agenda.

Quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, computational, case-study, design-science and theoretically grounded policy research are welcome.

Research may be completed or work-in-progress, provided that the submission demonstrates a clearly formulated research problem, credible analytical approach and identifiable contribution.

Accepted extended abstracts will be presented in a 15-minute conference presentation followed by Q&A.

This retains the original document’s emphasis on original work, methodological soundness and African empirical grounding.

Proposed Guidelines for Extended Abstract Submission

 

1. Length: 1,000–1,500 words
2. Required Structure

Every extended abstract should contain the following sections.

A. Title
B. Background and Research Problem

Authors should:

  • introduce the AI/compute infrastructure problem being addressed;
  • explain its significance;
  • establish the African context;
  • identify the practical and/or scholarly problem;
  • explain why the issue requires investigation.
C. Research Gap and Research Question(s)

Authors should clearly identify:

  • what is already known;
  • what remains inadequately understood;
  • why the gap matters;
  • the specific research question(s) or objectives.

The gap may be:  theoretical, empirical, methodological, technological, policy-related, contextual.

D. Literature and/or Conceptual Foundation

Authors should briefly position the work within relevant literature.

E. Methodology or Analytical Approach

Depending on the nature of the study, this may include:

  • research design;
  • empirical setting;
  • population/sample;
  • data sources;
  • data collection procedures;
  • variables/measures;
  • analytical techniques;
  • computational approach;
  • case-selection logic;
  • technical architecture, where relevant.
 
F. Findings, Preliminary Findings or Expected Results

For completed research: Authors should report the principal findings.

For research still underway: Authors may present:

  • preliminary findings;
  • emerging patterns;
  • propositions;
  • expected relationships or outcomes.
G. Contribution and Implications

Authors should explicitly explain what the study contributes. Contributions may include:

Theoretical contribution
How does the research extend, challenge or refine existing understanding?

Empirical contribution
What new evidence does it provide?

Technical contribution
What new architecture, system, model or implementation approach does it demonstrate?

Policy contribution
What should governments, regulators or development institutions do differently?

Managerial/practical contribution
What should infrastructure providers, technology companies, universities, investors or other actors do differently?

H. Infrastructure Relevance and African Context

Every submission should explicitly answer:

What does this research tell us about how Africa can build, own, finance, operate, govern or equitably access AI and compute infrastructure?

I. Conclusion

Briefly restate: the research problem, principal argument/finding, contribution, implications for BUILD 2026.

J. References

Type B: Policy Brief

Evidence-based brief (2,000 – 3,000 words) targeting government, regulatory, or DFI decision-makers. Must include:

  1. a clear problem statement,
  2. evidence summary,
  3. 3-5 actionable recommendations addressed to specific actors, and (iv) an implementation timeline.

Type C: Research Poster

Emerging or doctoral research displayed during the Innovation Expo. Submission includes an abstract (500 – 800 words) and an A0-size poster. Ideal for work-in-progress, preliminary findings, and methodological innovations.

Type D: Case Study

Authors may submit a case study (1,500–2,500 words) examining a real-world African project, organisation, policy, programme, or initiative relevant to the BUILD 2026 theme. The case should clearly describe the problem or opportunity, the solution or intervention, how it was implemented, key outcomes, challenges encountered, and lessons learned. Case studies may cover successful initiatives as well as projects that experienced difficulties or setbacks, provided they offer useful insights. Submissions should show relevance to areas such as compute, data centres, energy, connectivity, financing, data, governance, skills, inclusion, or AI infrastructure, and highlight lessons that could be useful to other organisations, policymakers, investors, or African countries.

Evaluation Criteria

All submissions undergo double-blind peer review by the BUILD 2026 Programme Committee. Reviewers assess:

  • Originality and novelty of the contribution,
  • Soundness of methodology, argumentation, or technical design,
  • Clarity of presentation and writing quality,
  • Relevance to the infrastructure-build imperative and African context,
  • Policy or practice implications for Nigeria and/or Africa,
  • Reproducibility (where applicable: code, data, or detailed methods).

Out of scope: Papers that discuss AI governance, ethics, or economics without grounding in the infrastructure question; purely theoretical work with no African empirical context; papers previously published in archival venues or under review elsewhere.

Important Dates

Abstract submission deadline

15 September 2026

Notification of acceptance

20 September 2026

Conference dates

21 – 22 October 2026

Publication and Dissemination

Accepted abstracts will be published in the BUILD 2026 Open-Access Research Compendium (ISSN registration in progress). Selected policy briefs will be transmitted directly to:

  • Federal Ministry of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy
  • National Information Technology Development Agency (NITDA)
  • National Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (NCAIR)
  • African Union Commission and Smart Africa Secretariat
  • Participating Development Finance Institutions
  • All authors will be invited to join the AI Scholars Research Network, a standing community of practice feeding into BUILD 2027 and quarterly policy advisory briefs.

Submission Guidelines

  • Format: PDF, single-column, 12-point font, 1.5-line spacing, 2.5 cm margins on all sides
  • Language: English
  • Anonymity: Remove all author identifiers for double-blind review. Author details are entered separately in the portal.
  • References: APA 7th edition
  • Figures and tables: Embedded, numbered sequentially, with descriptive captions

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