NEW DELHI — In a historic first, Europe, Asia, and Africa have joined forces on artificial intelligence — with the Global South firmly in the driver’s seat.
Italy, India, and Kenya signed a trilateral strategic cooperation agreement this week in New Delhi, marking what officials called the first collaboration between Europe, Asia, and Africa in the AI sector. The accord, formalized on the sidelines of the Global AI Impact Summit — itself a landmark event as the first such summit to be hosted in the Global South — signals a significant shift in how the world’s emerging economies intend to engage with transformative technology.
The agreement was signed by Italian Minister of Business and Made in Italy Adolfo Urso, Indian Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw, and Kenyan Minister of Information, Communications and Digital Economy William Kabogo Gitau. Notably, the ceremony took place in the presence of Nandan Nilekani, the architect of India’s Aadhaar digital identity system and one of the country’s most influential voices on technology policy.
A New Model for Tech Cooperation
At its core, the pact is about something more ambitious than infrastructure. Diplomats involved in the negotiations argue that the partnership represents a different model of technology cooperation — instead of hyperscale data centres designed for advanced economies, the focus is on modular infrastructure aligned with local energy availability and actual demand, a concept often described as “right-sized AI.”
The approach directly addresses a long-standing anxiety across the African continent: the agreement aligns with Africa’s interest in retaining control over data and avoiding dependence on a small number of foreign providers.
Special attention will be paid to the development of speech-to-text AI solutions in African languages, to expand access to digital services and reduce language barriers. This is not a peripheral concern. Across Africa’s 54 countries, hundreds of languages are spoken, and the absence of AI tools that reflect this linguistic diversity has been a persistent barrier to meaningful digital inclusion.
What the Agreement Contains
The accord is part of the Artificial Intelligence for Sustainable Development Hub, promoted by Italy’s Ministry of Business and Made in Italy in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and aligned with Italy’s Mattei Plan for African development. It also falls under the broader India-Italy Strategic Action Plan 2025–2029.
Concretely, the agreement aims to structure the adoption of artificial intelligence by launching fifteen high-impact priority use cases as early as 2026, contributing to the goal of creating around one hundred channels for the dissemination of AI in developing countries. Target sectors include agriculture, healthcare, education, and public services.
Participating organizations include Italy’s MIMIT AI Cluster, India’s EkStep/People+AI Foundation, and Kenya’s Directorate for Digital Economy and Emerging Technologies. A trilateral working group will be established to guide and monitor the initial use cases in coordination with each country’s national strategies.
The Geopolitical Backdrop
For Italy, the deal carries a dual strategic purpose. Officials describe the arrangement as a practical extension of the India–Italy Strategic Action Plan for 2025–2029, deepening ties with India — now viewed in Rome as a critical partner in technology and supply chains — while anchoring development cooperation in Africa through non-aid-based industrial partnerships.
Minister Urso framed it in expansive terms, saying the partnership would “develop technological innovation and build the future of entire generations, who can finally compete on equal terms with the rest of the world.”
Italy also has significant economic motivations in play. Italy aims to double its exports to India over the next three years, a course of action possible with a prospective EU-India free trade agreement, with the goal of eliminating trade barriers and closing that deal by the end of the year.
For the UNDP, the significance of the moment was hard to overstate. Keyzom Ngodup Massally, the organization’s AI Hub Director, said the discussions in New Delhi marked a meaningful transition — shifting focus from high-level concepts to the practical architecture of impact: building ecosystems that integrate finance, technology, and international cooperation to deliver real value.
Investment and Infrastructure
The New Delhi signing does not stand alone. The agreement builds on announcements made the previous week in Nairobi during the Artificial Intelligence Forum, where Italy confirmed it is working to establish an acceleration program for African startups backed by an initial €50 million venture capital fund, with a launch expected within two to three months.
The initiative also includes the creation of the first Italian incubator in Africa, focused on climate technologies, food systems, and digital public infrastructure, as well as the activation of an innovation corridor connecting Italy, Nairobi, India, and San Francisco, with the support of the Nairobi International Financial Center for investment structuring.
A Template for the Global South?
Perhaps the most consequential aspect of this agreement lies not in its specifics, but in what it represents as a model. If successful, the Italy–India–Kenya axis could offer a template for how emerging technologies are deployed across the Global South — not as imported solutions, but as jointly designed systems tailored to local needs.
The UNDP’s Massally captured the philosophy driving the initiative: the goal is to build responsible pathways for AI diffusion that prioritize equity, trust, and accountability, so AI can benefit humanity at scale and leave no one behind.
For a world increasingly shaped by artificial intelligence — and one where the spoils of that technology have so far been overwhelmingly concentrated in wealthy nations — that ambition, if realized, would be genuinely historic.
The next milestone for this initiative is a digital innovation fair scheduled for June 24–26 at BolognaFiere, Italy, where progress on the partnership’s implementation is expected to be presented publicly.
