Technology and power: Why Africa’s tech boom must prioritise peace

In South Sudan, a country that has endured years of violence, a simple mobile tool is helping communities act before tensions explode. It enables local peace committees and residents to send real-time conflict alerts, even from remote areas, feeding into an early warning system that supports faster verification, coordination and response.

Africa’s tech revolution is often framed as a story of growth, disruption and leapfrogging. Yet beneath that narrative lies a less comfortable truth. The continent’s future peace will not be secured only at negotiating tables; it will also be shaped by the data systems, AI models, digital platforms and infrastructure being designed and built today.

Africa’s tech ecosystem

At the Africa Tech Summit held in Nairobi, Kenya, from 11–12 February 2026, the Open Society Foundations panel on the “Role of Technology in Realising a Peaceful Continent” confronted a reality that peacebuilders can no longer afford to ignore: Africa’s tech ecosystem is already shaping the dynamics of conflict and stability, and technology is no longer peripheral to peacebuilding — it is at the core of designing conflict transformation approaches. With conflicts becoming increasingly complex and intractable, traditional approaches are under growing strain, and there is a need to reimagine conflict transformation — its tools and approaches.

Africa is the world’s youngest continent. According to the United Nations World Population Prospects 2024, more than 60 per cent of Africans are under 25. By 2030, young Africans will constitute 42 per cent of the global youth population. At the same time, more than 640 million Africans are online — many of them young, digitally savvy and politically aware.

This generation is not just scrolling. They are building. They are developing AI tools, mapping crises, countering disinformation, designing civic platforms and experimenting with data-driven accountability. They are shaping the infrastructure of social contracts and strengthening social cohesion. From Lagos to Johannesburg, and from Cairo to Nairobi, Africa’s connected youth are bridging ethnic, religious, national and political divides, and in the process unravelling long-held prejudices and stereotypes that provide fertile ground for conflict. Their efforts, however, remain disjointed, underfunded and minuscule in relation to the intractable peace and social cohesion challenges the continent faces.

Globally, the scale and speed of war-tech development is staggering. Military ecosystems are pouring unprecedented investment into artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, predictive surveillance and cyber capabilities. Conflict actors are adaptive, strategic and well resourced. They understand technology as power. Peace efforts, in contrast, remain fragmented and underfunded, characterised by pilot grants, fragmented funding cycles and short-term innovation challenges.

Peace tech

If Africa does not invest intentionally in peace tech — in early warning systems, ethical AI design, secure civic platforms and accountable governance — the technological balance will inevitably tilt towards those who weaponise innovation rather than those who use it to prevent harm. This is not a call to militarise peacebuilding. It is a call to resource it.

Yet investment alone is insufficient. We must resist the myth that technology is inherently progressive in conflict transformation. Technology encodes power. It reflects political choices, economic incentives and institutional biases. AI systems trained on skewed data can reinforce inequality. Poorly governed platforms can accelerate polarisation. Extractive data practices can erode trust in already fragile contexts.

The critical question is not simply what technologies are being built. It is whose peace they are designed to advance: a peace rooted in surveillance and control, or one grounded in justice, accountability and local agency?

Peace tech must therefore be built as infrastructure. It must be financed with the seriousness reserved for cybersecurity and fintech. It must be regulated with ethical clarity. It must be designed with communities, not for them. And it must not be built in isolation.

Peace tech must be built as an ecosystem. That ecosystem must include financiers who understand war economies, policymakers who craft enabling regulatory frameworks, cybersecurity experts who safeguard civic space, technologists who prioritise ethical design, and health professionals who address the psychosocial and physical toll of violence — among others.

Equally important is South–South learning. Innovations emerging from fragile contexts in Africa, the Middle East and Asia offer practical lessons on resilience, community-driven governance, adaptive design and locally grounded solutions. Peacebuilding in the advanced technology age cannot remain siloed within traditional circles; it must be networked across regions and disciplines.

Africa’s tech leaders, investors and policymakers face a defining choice. They can treat peace as a corporate social responsibility sidebar, or they can recognise that every line of code, every data governance decision and every AI deployment is a political act with consequences for stability, peace and justice.

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Fiona Beth Asuke and Tem Fuh Mbuh are both programme managers at the Open Society Foundations.