“What I saw was a lot of passion, excellent skills and, above all, a great desire to succeed,” said Francesco Cerruti, general manager of Italian Tech Alliance, as he began describing his participation in the Nairobi AI Forum, organised by the Kenyan and Italian governments and the UNDP (United Nations Development Programme), to Startupbusiness. “There are significant areas of excellence and, above all, there is a capacity for innovation that does not have to contend with legacy issues, which are practically non-existent here. This means that it is possible to greatly accelerate the innovation process, knowing that there are no previous constraints.”
The event, which is part of the Roman government’s initiatives under the umbrella of the so-called ‘Mattei Plan’, brought together representatives of the Italian and Kenyan innovation ecosystems and involved start-ups from various African countries that were identified and selected by the UNDP.
The Forum took place less than a year after the inauguration in Rome of the AI Hub for Sustainable Development, a programme launched by the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy (Mimit) during Italy’s G7 presidency, and saw the active participation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation (Maeci), the Italian Embassy in Nairobi, together with the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy (Mimit) and the Ministry of University and Research (Mur). According to a statement from Mimit, over 500 participants attended the event, including government officials, private sector executives, innovators and financiers from Africa, Europe and the G7 countries.
“The Nairobi AI Forum gives a decisive boost to industrial innovation in Africa and directly reinforces the objectives of the Mattei Plan through strategic partnerships and operational agreements with innovators at the AI Hub in Kenya,” says Minister for Enterprise and Made in Italy, Adolfo Urso in a statement. The commitments made in Rome on 20 June 2025, the launch date of the Hub, are increasingly translating into concrete results: public-private partnerships with the Italian Space Agency, the Kenya Space Agency, the Kenyan Ministry of Agriculture, Microsoft, NASA Harvest and the UNDP are generating tangible industrial impacts in support of small businesses: this is Italy’s decisive and strategic response to the challenge of global innovation’.
The meeting focused on the adoption and implementation of AI in strategic sectors such as agriculture, education, energy, health and food security, addressing the main barriers to development in Africa and promoting sustainable and scalable infrastructure, investment-ready ecosystems, strategic partnerships and targeted financing instruments.
During the forum, four new partnerships were announced, confirming the Hub’s role as a catalyst for the Italian and African industrial system in the spirit of the Mattei Plan: Cybersecurity readiness initiative for African AI startups, the Competence Centre, Cyber 4.0, in collaboration with the AI Hub, will launch a call to strengthen cybersecurity among African artificial intelligence startups. The programme will draw on practical training from the Cisco cyber security centre in Nairobi; Co-design launch of the AI 10 Billion Initiative in collaboration with the African Development Bank and private sector partners, the UNDP and the AI Hub have announced the co-design of the ‘AI 10 Billion’ initiative, which aims to create up to 45 million jobs in Africa by 2035 through targeted investments in AI and its adoption. The initiative involves incremental commitments of up to $10 billion to fuel AI entrepreneurship, basic data infrastructure, technical policy support and continental AI hubs. Harmonic Africa startup acceleration programme, Harmonic Innovation Group, in collaboration with the AI Hub, has launched an acceleration programme to support high-growth African startups in the field of AI through capital, technical assistance and market access. The initiative includes an initial budget of €50 million, the creation of the first Italian incubator in Africa, a focus on climate technologies, food systems and digital public infrastructure, and the launch of a Nairobi–Italy–San Francisco–India innovation corridor, with the support of the Nairobi International Financial Centre for investment structuring and regulatory certainty. Space-enabled AI collaboration for food security announced a new public-private partnership that, through space data and AI, will strengthen food security and climate resilience in Kenya, with potential for expansion across Africa. The initiative, co-led by the governments of Kenya and Italy and supported by the Kenya Space Agency, the Italian Space Agency, NASA Harvest, Microsoft and the AI Hub, will create a geospatial database for agriculture, providing standardised and up-to-date layers for crop mapping, yield forecasting and early detection of climate risks for the benefit of farmers, insurers, financial institutions and public agencies.
In particular, the accelerator programme has been developed with Primo Capital and aims to bridge the gap between infrastructure and impact by building a comprehensive ecosystem for African entrepreneurs in the field of AI and technology. Gianluca Dettori, president and general partner of Primo Capital, emphasises in a statement: ‘Africa represents one of the most promising start-up ecosystems for the coming years. With a huge young population and significant economic growth rates, the African startup ecosystem is reaching a very attractive level of maturity. Last year, approximately $4 billion in venture capital was invested in Africa, mainly concentrated in Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Egypt. We are extremely happy to be working on this project in partnership with Harmonic Innovation Group, with whom we share a vision and values.”
“I believe that the Mattei Plan strategy,” continues Cerruti, “is very important, and having been able to participate directly in the event, it became clear that this project certainly has value in creating value for all those who participate in it, but also value in terms of Italy’s strategic positioning.”
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