By Atoyebi Nike
Google has opened its first Artificial Intelligence Community Centre in Africa, located in Accra, Ghana, as part of a $37 million investment aimed at accelerating AI innovation and capacity building across the continent. The centre will serve as a hub for training, research, and collaboration, offering workshops, events, and resources to support responsible AI development rooted in African priorities.
According to Dr. James Manyika, Senior Vice President for Research, Labs, and Technology & Society at Google, the initiative demonstrates the company’s long-term commitment to Africa’s digital transformation. He said Africa is home to some of the most important and inspiring work in AI and that Google is supporting the next wave of innovation through sustained investment and local partnerships.
The new centre will focus on four key areas AI literacy, community technology, social impact, and arts and culture—creating inclusive opportunities for developers, students, researchers, and creatives. Dr. Yossi Matias, Vice President of Engineering and Research at Google, described the move as a reflection of the continent’s creativity and innovation potential, stating that solutions built in Africa could shape global technology.
The AI Community Centre is part of a broader strategy that includes a $25 million AI for Food Security Collaborative to help address hunger and farming challenges through early forecasting and smart support tools. Google has also awarded $3 million to Masakhane, a research collective working on AI tools for over 40 African languages, aimed at improving access to digital content in native tongues.
To further support innovation, Google is providing catalytic funding to more than 100 early-stage AI startups in sectors like agriculture, healthcare, and education. These startups will receive financial backing, technical mentorship, and guidance on responsible AI use.
Google has also pledged 100,000 fully funded Career Certificate scholarships for students in Ghana, covering areas such as AI Essentials, Prompting Essentials, Data Analytics, and Cybersecurity. In addition, Google.org is providing $7 million to develop AI talent in Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Ghana, focusing on localized AI curricula and online safety education.
Two $1 million research grants were also announced, with one going to the African Institute for Data Science and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Pretoria and the other to the Wits Machine Intelligence and Neural Discovery Institute in South Africa, to fund MSc and PhD research in foundational AI areas.
These investments build on Google’s ongoing work in the region, including AI-powered maternal health dashboards in Ghana and Nigeria, wildfire alerts in East Africa, and local language model development by teams in Accra and Nairobi.
