Artificial intelligence is attracting billions of dollars in investment, but most of that money is flowing to the same places. For context, Silicon Valley, China, and a handful of technology hubs across Asia and Europe.

Meanwhile, Africa and the Caribbean remain largely overlooked. Instead of building AI technologies, many countries in these regions are merely customers of products developed elsewhere.

In an interview, I spoke with Lily Dash about this development. Dash is the founder of Future Caribbean, who has worked with entrepreneurs and investors across Africa and the Caribbean to grow their technology ecosystems.

She believes both regions have a rare opportunity to build their own AI industries instead of relying on foreign technology. But she also warns that the opportunity won’t last forever.

The Growth Is There. The Investment Isn’t.

On paper, Africa’s AI market is growing at an astonishing pace. The market was worth $4.51 billion in 2025 and is expected to reach $16.53 billion by 2030. This represents an annual growth of more than 27%. Despite that, Africa still accounts for only 1% to 1.5% of global AI spending.

The Caribbean faces a similar hurdle. According to the Caribbean Development Bank, regional GDP is expected to grow by just 1.1% in 2026, excluding Guyana, whose economy has been boosted by oil production.

During the first half of 2025, 83% of AI startup funding in Africa went to just four countries: Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, and Egypt. That left the rest of the continent, along with almost the entire Caribbean, competing for a very small share of global AI investment.

Dash says the problem isn’t a lack of opportunity. Instead, she believes investors have simply overlooked these markets.

“Technology is the largest wealth-generating vehicle in the world,” she said. “The majority of wealth is being created by the technology sector. But the Caribbean is quite decoupled from that.”

In fact, some organizations believe the potential is much bigger than what the current investment suggests.

The Brookings Institution projected that AI could double Africa’s GDP growth rate by 2035. Meanwhile, the World Economic Forum says investing in AI computing infrastructure alone could bring in $1.5 trillion in economic value across Africa by 2030.

Why Fragmentation Could Become a Competitive Advantage

One of the top reasons investors hesitate is that scaling in both regions appears difficult. The Caribbean is made up of small island nations with different currencies, legal systems, and regulations. Africa has similar challenges across its 54 countries, each with its own policies and financial systems.

“If you can make it here,” she said, “you can make it anywhere.” 

Dash argues that founders should build solutions that work instead of waiting for regulations to become simpler.

She also pointed to the idea of “leapfrogging,” where developing markets skip older technologies and move straight to newer ones.

Many companies in these regions don’t have decades of outdated software to replace, unlike businesses in North America and Europe. Instead, they can build AI-powered businesses from the ground up.

Building AI has also become much cheaper. Just a few years ago, developing advanced AI applications cost millions of dollars. Today, developers in Kingston, Lagos, Nairobi, and Accra have access to many of the same open-source tools used in Silicon Valley.

Building AI Is One Thing. Owning It Is Another.

AI adoption is growing across Africa and the Caribbean, but much of the technology is still owned by companies outside the region.

Many businesses rely on American or Asian AI platforms, pay subscription fees to foreign providers, and store their data on cloud infrastructure they don’t control. That means the benefits of AI often flow back to companies overseas.

The OECD’s Africa Capital Markets Report 2025 found that many African countries still depend on foreign digital infrastructure.

Dash believes that dependence could become one of the biggest challenges of the AI era.

“The past does not equal the future,” she said. “We have an opportunity to create a whole new world for ourselves.”

She says Africa and the Caribbean should invest more in open-source AI, local computing infrastructure, and sovereign AI models trained on regional data instead of relying on imported technology.

AI Could Transform Payments and Lending

Sending money between Caribbean countries remains expensive. According to Dash, transferring money between Barbados and Jamaica costs around 5.9%, while some payment routes involving Trinidad cost between 8% and 9%.

Those fees make it harder for businesses to trade across the region.  For comparison, the World Bank wants global remittance costs to fall to 3%, but many Caribbean payment routes remain almost twice as expensive.

Africa faces similar problems. Even with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), moving money across borders is still slow and costly.

Dash believes Agentic AI could help reduce those costs by finding cheaper payment routes, matching currencies more efficiently, and automating transactions in real time.

AI could also make it easier for small businesses to borrow money. Today, many banks avoid small loans because processing them costs almost as much as they earn. As she puts it, “A dollar saved is a dollar earned.”

Why Investors Should Be Paying Attention

Many institutional investors are still paying little attention to the opportunity despite the rapid growth of AI across Africa and the Caribbean.

According to Dash, that is more about a lack of information than a lack of potential. Africa’s AI market is expected to grow by more than 27% a year through 2030, making it one of the fastest-growing AI markets in the world.

The Caribbean also has several advantages, including its proximity to the United States, a large English-speaking workforce, a strong global diaspora, and fewer legacy technology systems than many developed markets.

Benzinga Disclaimer: This article is from an unpaid external contributor. It does not represent Benzinga’s reporting and has not been edited for content or accuracy.