Microsoft has officially crossed a major finish line in its race to connect Africa to the internet, but the company isn’t stopping to take a victory lap. Instead, it’s aggressively moving the goalposts toward the tech industry’s current obsession: Artificial Intelligence.
During the B20 Summit in South Africa last week, Microsoft announced it has facilitated internet access for over 117 million people across the African continent. That figure is significant not just for its scale, but because it beats the company’s own deadline; the original “Airband” initiative target was to reach 100 million people by the end of 2025.
But in a keynote speech detailed to press, Melanie Nakagawa, Microsoft’s Chief Sustainability Officer, made it clear that basic connectivity was never the endgame. It was the pipeline. “Connectivity is the foundation for AI,” Nakagawa said. “Without access to the internet, the promise of technology remains out of reach.”
Now, Microsoft is leveraging that infrastructure to launch a massive collaboration with the African Development Bank (AfDB), aimed at plugging a multi-billion dollar hole in the continent’s agricultural sector.
The Connectivity Playbook
To understand where Microsoft is going, you have to look at how they hit that 117 million number. Microsoft didn’t suddenly become a telecom utility. Instead, they spent the last few years acting as a venture capitalist and technical co-pilot for local Internet Service Providers (ISPs).
The logic is simple: Local ISPs know the terrain and the community, but they are often starved for capital (specifically Series A/B funding) and bogged down by the high cost of hardware (CapEx). Microsoft stepped in to subsidize those costs and provide technical backing.
The results, according to the case studies Nakagawa highlighted, have been tangible:
- In Kenya: Microsoft’s longtime partner Mawingu expanded broadband into rural Laikipia County. The primary use case wasn’t just scrolling social media; it was connecting clinics to specialists in Nairobi via video conference, breaking the isolation of rural healthcare.
- In South Africa: An ISP called Ilitha is taking a different approach to digital literacy by building gaming centers in townships. One flagship center in Mdantsane is using gaming to get young people comfortable with digital interfaces—a project they call “SHE-Plays.”
- The Hardware Angle: Connectivity is useless without a device. Microsoft has been backing M-KOPA, the fintech famous for its pay-as-you-go solar model, which has now pivoted to smartphones. They are currently running Kenya’s first local smartphone manufacturing plant to lower the barrier to entry.
The Pivot to “AI Diffusion”
Here is where the strategy shifts from altruistic infrastructure to long-term market building. Microsoft’s new theory of change is that once you have the connection (the pipe) and the skills (the people), you need to inject the software (AI).
Nakagawa refers to this as “AI Diffusion.” It’s a sanitized term for a messy reality: 900 million Africans are still offline. Those who are online often lack the capital to use advanced tools.
To bridge this, Microsoft is teaming up with the African Development Bank (AfDB) to launch a pan-African financing facility specifically for agri-SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises in agriculture).
The problem, as Microsoft frames it, is a “reinforcing barrier.” African agriculture faces a $74–80 billion annual financing gap. Farmers can’t get loans to buy tech, and without tech, they can’t generate the data needed to prove they are creditworthy.
The new facility is a five-year plan where AfDB provides the financial muscle (loans, grants) and Microsoft provides the tech stack. The goal is to move farmers from subsistence methods to AI-enabled agriculture—using data to predict weather patterns, optimize crop yields, and build climate resilience.
Why This Matters
It is easy to be cynical about “AI for farmers” as a buzzword salad. However, the partnership with Mastercard and Mawingu suggests a practical application is already in motion: they are currently connecting 13 farmer cooperatives in Kenya, aiming to upskill 50,000 farmers on digital platforms.
For Microsoft, this isn’t just charity. It’s ecosystem engineering. By solving the “last mile” connectivity problem, they are effectively building the next generation of users for their cloud and AI services. A farmer in Kenya using an AI tool to check crop prices is, ultimately, a data point in the Microsoft Azure ecosystem.
“No single company can close the digital divide,” Nakagawa noted in her speech. That is true, but Microsoft is making sure that when the divide closes, its software is waiting on the other side.
