With a little over a month to go, anticipation is building for the 29th edition of Africa Tech Festival, the continent’s longest running technology event.
As the countdown continues, the programme is taking shape around some of the most pressing questions facing Africa’s digital economy, from AI and the infrastructure needed to support it, to cybersecurity, connectivity and the changing investment environment for African technology businesses.
Africa Tech Festival returns to the Cape Town International Convention Centre from 16 to 19 November 2026, bringing together government, technology companies, telecoms operators, infrastructure providers, enterprise leaders, startups and investors from across the continent and beyond.
“The questions facing Africa’s digital economy are becoming more interlinked, more complex and more urgent. It’s no longer simply about whether businesses will adopt AI, move to the cloud or invest in new infrastructure, but about how those decisions are made, who benefits from them and what needs to be in place for them to deliver sustainable growth,” said David Monaghan, VP, Africa Tech Festival. “This year’s programme is designed to provide a platform for those conversations and give stakeholders a clearer view of the decisions, partnerships and investment priorities that will shape the next phase of Africa’s digital development.”
Artificial intelligence runs through much of the 2026 programme. A panel titled Beyond Adoption: What Will Make Africa an AI Producer, Not Just a Consumer? will examine what is required to build globally competitive AI capabilities in Africa. Sessions will explore the emergence of agentic AI in enterprise decision-making and how companies should prioritise investment across AI, cloud, data platforms and core systems as they modernise for growth.
That focus on capability extends to the infrastructure underpinning it. AI growth is inseparable from questions about data centres, cloud infrastructure and local compute capacity. The Next Wave of AI Infrastructure Growth panel will consider where new capacity should be built, the role of hyperscaler partnerships and the need for localised compute to meet data sovereignty requirements. Dedicated discussions will examine which African markets are attracting investment interest, how power availability and hyperscaler presence are shaping that interest, and how sovereignty, performance and cost are reshaping cloud architecture decisions.
Africa’s next phase of digital growth also depends on extending reliable connectivity while keeping digital businesses and services secure. The Telecoms & Connectivity programme will examine fibre investment, 4G and 5G deployment and the growing role of satellite technology in reaching underserved communities.
All of these conversations point to a maturing digital economy, where competitiveness depends as much on enabling environments as on ambition, and where practical groundwork, compute, capital, skills and partnerships will determine who benefits from Africa’s growth. This is what makes Africa Tech Festival such a highly anticipated fixture on the calendar: it is where these decisions are debated, tested and made, bringing together the people setting policy, developing infrastructure and allocating capital across the sector.
With just a month to go, the excitement is building for three days of conversation, connection and insight into where Africa’s digital future is heading. Registration for Africa Tech Festival 2026 is now open.
