By Ajong Mbapndah L
Africa’s artificial intelligence ambitions must translate into viable businesses, paying customers, investor returns and sustainable economic growth, investor and merchant banker Roger B. Jantio argued in his contribution to the Digital Futures, Technology and AI panel at Africa Diaspora Day on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on September 16, 2026.
Bringing an investment and financing perspective to the discussion, Jantio challenged African entrepreneurs, investors, governments and diaspora stakeholders to look beyond technological breakthroughs and focus on what it takes to turn promising innovations into commercially successful companies. His message centered on investment discipline, access to customers, appropriate financing and a more structured approach to mobilizing diaspora capital.
“I come to this conversation as an investor and merchant banker. My question is not simply what AI can do, but what makes an AI opportunity investable and financeable?” he stated in his prepared remarks.
For Jantio, Africa’s opportunity is not simply to adopt technologies developed elsewhere but to build commercially viable solutions around the continent’s own challenges. Trade, financial services, logistics, agriculture and healthcare offer opportunities for African entrepreneurs to develop products that address local needs while creating businesses capable of competing internationally.
“Africa does not have to reproduce everything Silicon Valley has already built. We can build solutions around African problems, African markets and African data—and export the solutions that prove themselves,” he argued in his panel preparation notes.
His central proposition was that Africa’s AI progress should be measured by the companies created, revenues generated, intellectual property developed, exports produced and returns delivered to investors. Technology adoption, while important, is only part of the equation.
From Promising Pilots to Paying Customers
Jantio placed investability at the center of his contribution, outlining a progression from identifying a genuine problem to developing a pilot, securing paying customers, demonstrating sound economics, achieving scale and delivering credible investor returns.
The distinction between a promising technology and a viable business, he explained, is critical. Successful demonstrations may attract attention, but investors require evidence of commercial demand, recurring revenue, manageable costs and a business model capable of expanding beyond a single customer or market.
“A pilot proves that something may work. A paying customer begins to prove that there is a business,” he emphasized in his prepared talking points.
He also warned against confusing the quality of a company with the attractiveness of an investment. Even a business with strong technology and significant commercial potential can represent a poor investment if its valuation leaves insufficient room for returns.
“A brilliant company at the wrong valuation can be a very bad investment,” he cautioned.
For African startups, the challenge is therefore not simply attracting investors but building businesses that can compete for capital on commercial merit. That requires credible products, paying customers, sustainable margins and evidence that operations can expand beyond the founder’s personal relationships or an initial pilot project.
Jantio also drew attention to the role of governments and corporations in creating demand for emerging African technologies. While startup accelerators have become an established part of the innovation ecosystem, he believes greater attention must be paid to helping institutions discover, evaluate and procure credible technological solutions.
“Founders don’t scale on applause. They scale on contracts,” he declared in his prepared remarks.
A government agency or corporation that moves from testing a product to purchasing it can provide the revenue and commercial validation needed to attract further investment. Procurement, in this context, becomes more than a purchasing decision; it helps establish whether an innovation can become a sustainable business.
Matching the Right Capital With the Right Risk
Jantio’s financing perspective extended to the infrastructure required to support Africa’s AI ambitions. Data centers, computing capacity and related facilities, he argued, must be assessed with the same commercial discipline applied to other major infrastructure investments.
Before committing capital, investors need to understand who will use the infrastructure, who will pay for it, how reliable the projected revenues are and how risks will be allocated. Strategic importance alone does not eliminate the need for sound commercial foundations.
“From a financier’s perspective, AI infrastructure is still infrastructure,” he noted in his panel preparation material, stressing that technological architecture and financing structures must be developed together.
Different types of investors also have different roles. Venture capital can support early-stage companies, banks can finance established cash flows, development finance institutions can help address risks that initially discourage private investors, and pension funds can participate through structures appropriate to their investment requirements.
For startups, this means progressing through successive financing stages, from pre-seed and seed capital to Series A, later funding rounds and growth investment. Each stage requires stronger evidence of commercial performance and attracts investors with different expectations.
“Different stages require different capital. The objective is to graduate from one class of capital to the next,” Jantio explained in his prepared remarks.
He emphasized the importance of successful exits in sustaining this investment cycle. When early investors realize returns, those outcomes can validate a market, build confidence and release capital for reinvestment in the next generation of African companies.
Diaspora Capital: The Next Frontier Beyond Remittances
One of the central themes of Jantio’s contribution was the need to rethink how Africa engages its diaspora financially. While remittances remain an important source of support for households and economies across the continent, he argued that greater attention should be directed toward creating formal mechanisms that allow diaspora resources to finance productive businesses and investment opportunities.
“For decades we have celebrated diaspora remittances. The next frontier is diaspora investment,” he stated.
The problem, in Jantio’s assessment, is not simply the availability of capital but the absence of sufficiently developed structures through which diaspora investors can identify credible opportunities, manage risk and participate in professionally organized investments.
“Africa does not lack diaspora capital. What it lacks is an architecture for diaspora investment,” he argued.
Drawing lessons from India, Jantio referenced the Overseas Indian Facilitation Centre and formal investment channels available to Non-Resident Indians and Overseas Citizens of India as examples of institutional approaches to diaspora economic engagement. He also pointed to India Tech-Bridge as an illustration of efforts to connect entrepreneurs with incubation, American market access, mentorship and potential investment opportunities.
The lesson for Africa, he suggested, is that diaspora engagement should be organized around credible investment opportunities, professional capital, entrepreneurship and access to global markets rather than relying primarily on sentiment and individual financial transfers.
Jantio disclosed that he had worked on the core concept behind a legislative proposal in Washington based on similar principles. The AIDA concept outlined in his discussion material envisages matching investment, a dedicated diaspora investment window, incentives for qualified investments and structured vehicles to channel diaspora resources into productive economic activity.
The initiative was presented as a proposal rather than an enacted legislative program, with Jantio making the broader case for credible mechanisms that allow diaspora members to participate as strategic investors.
“The diaspora should not only send money home. It should have credible mechanisms to invest capital home,” he maintained.
Beyond financing, he sees diaspora networks as important sources of expertise, commercial relationships and access to international markets. Their contribution to Africa’s technological development should therefore be measured not only by financial transfers but also by the businesses, investments and transactions they help generate.
Connecting AI to Trade and Economic Opportunity
Jantio’s contribution also connected AI investment to the broader trade agenda of Africa Diaspora Day. He argued that the continent’s technological future should be judged by improvements in economic productivity, including the ability of businesses to find customers, reduce financing costs, improve logistics, increase worker productivity and sell across borders.
“The next strategic trade corridor is not only physical. It is also digital,” he observed in his prepared remarks.
While ports, roads and energy infrastructure remain essential to trade, data, computing capacity, digital payments and intelligence increasingly influence how efficiently businesses operate across those physical networks. The opportunity for Africa is to combine these capabilities with entrepreneurship and investment to build companies that can compete across regional and international markets.
His approach also carries implications for U.S.–Africa technology partnerships. Rather than measuring success primarily by the volume of American technology sold to African markets, Jantio wants to see American capital and technology combined with African entrepreneurship to develop productive capacity, create jobs and expand trade.
For the diaspora, this creates opportunities to connect African entrepreneurs with customers, investors, commercial partners and markets in the United States and elsewhere.
A Two-Year Test for Africa’s AI Ambitions
Looking ahead, Jantio identified the creation of paying customers as a priority for the next 24 months. Governments, African corporations and global enterprises, he argued, can help accelerate the development of credible technology businesses by moving beyond pilot programs and committing to commercial procurement.
His proposed measures of progress include more companies generating revenue, more startups graduating to advanced financing rounds, successful investor exits and greater participation of diaspora capital in productive investment.
“We don’t need another two years of celebrating promising pilots. We need deployments, revenues, repeat customers and scale,” he stated in his prepared remarks.
For Jantio, the objective is to establish an investment cycle in which commercial success attracts additional capital, investor returns strengthen confidence and successful exits release resources to finance new businesses. Such a system would give African entrepreneurs a clearer path from innovation to growth while providing investors with credible opportunities to participate in the continent’s technology economy.
His contribution to the Capitol Hill discussion placed a commercial test at the heart of Africa’s AI ambitions, challenging entrepreneurs, investors, institutions and diaspora stakeholders to demonstrate progress through businesses built, contracts secured, capital mobilized and economic value retained on the continent.
“Africa’s AI opportunity will ultimately be measured not by how much technology we consume, but by how much economic value we create and retain,” he stated in his prepared closing remarks.
