I walked into GITEX Africa 2026 expecting a tech fair. I walked out with a different understanding of where Africa — and the people building its digital future — actually stand.
Here’s what three days on the floor of the continent’s largest AI and technology event taught me.
The Scale
GITEX Africa 2026 wasn’t a side event or a regional footnote. It opened its fourth edition in Marrakech with a clear signal: Africa is no longer positioning itself as an emerging player — it’s demanding a seat at the table where the rules are written.
- 1,450+ exhibitors from 145 countries
- 55,000+ attendees
- 700+ speakers
- 400 investors managing $350B+ in assets
But statistics only tell part of the story.
AI Infrastructure Is No Longer Abstract
One of the most striking announcements was the Nexus AI Factory — a $1.2 billion sovereign AI infrastructure project near Casablanca, targeting 500MW of capacity running entirely on renewable energy. The first of its kind on the continent.
Alongside that, plans for Igouda — set to become Africa’s largest data center — were unveiled in Dakhla. And the country rose 14 places in the global government AI readiness index in 2025 alone.
That framing resonated across every conversation I had. AI isn’t a feature — it’s infrastructure. And the race to own that infrastructure is already underway.
The People Who Made It Click
Beyond the keynotes and booth demos, what I’ll remember most are four conversations that each left me with something concrete.
Yassine Bourgana & Badr Aouad — Deloitte
Meeting Yassine and Badr gave me a clearer picture of how large consulting firms are no longer just advising on digital transformation — they’re actively building it. Deloitte recently launched a CyberAcademy in Casablanca, directly training Moroccan professionals in cybersecurity at a time when the country is investing heavily in digital infrastructure.
Our exchange kept circling back to one uncomfortable truth: most organizations collect data but have no architecture to actually use it. The gap between having data and deriving value from it isn’t a technology problem — it’s a strategy and governance problem.
Takeaway: Data strategy is infrastructure. Organizations that treat it as an afterthought will be locked out of the next phase of digital growth.
Mouhssine Lakhdissi — Teal & AI Crafters
Mouhssine is co-founder of AI Crafters alongside Zouheir Lakhdissi and Morad El Mazyani. In under a year, AI Crafters trained over 3,000 professionals across 20 companies, operating across three continents. Their recent acquisition of Digitancy completes the value chain — from skills development all the way through to large-scale AI deployment inside organizations.
What our conversation unlocked for me: the bottleneck in AI adoption isn’t access to models or tools — it’s the human infrastructure around them. You can deploy the most sophisticated AI system in the world and it will fail if the people around it don’t know how to use, question, or maintain it.
Takeaway: The real AI gap isn’t technological — it’s human. Training people to work alongside AI is as important as building the AI itself.
Yazid Bahrawi — Co-founder, Tachrone.ma
This was the conversation I didn’t expect to be one of the most memorable. Yazid built Tachrone.ma out of personal frustration — as a real estate developer navigating Morocco’s construction sector (BTP), he kept hitting the same wall: finding reliable contractors, comparing material prices, planning costs — all opaque, slow, and entirely manual.
So he digitized it. A marketplace connecting construction professionals, companies, and individuals — with transparent pricing and centralized information that previously lived in phone books and word of mouth. In just a few months after launch, the platform crossed 1 million visits.
Our conversation about startup ecosystems and digitalization made one thing clear: the most durable startups aren’t the ones chasing the flashiest trends. They’re the ones that look at industries everyone else ignores and simply bring them into the present.
Takeaway: The best startup ideas aren’t always the most futuristic. Sometimes they’re just the most overdue.
Final Thought
GITEX Africa 2026 confirmed something I’d been sensing for a while: the tech conversation in Africa has matured. We’re past “is this possible?” and deep into “how do we actually execute?”.
The infrastructure is being built. The investment is arriving. The talent exists.
What’s left is the hard, unglamorous work — data governance, human upskilling, digitizing industries that never made the leap. These aren’t sexy problems. But they’re the ones that will determine whether Africa leads or follows in the AI era.
Three days in Marrakech didn’t give me answers. But they gave me better questions. And sometimes that’s enough.
