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Gates Foundation Chairman Bill Gates has urged governments across Africa to accelerate efforts to build the data infrastructure needed to harness the benefits of artificial intelligence, as he commits more than $1 billion to AI projects, with the majority located on the continent.

Gates told CNBC Africa in an interview that the foundation views AI as a practical tool in three key sectors: health, agriculture and education, describing it as an “accelerant” that can help address long-standing shortages of skills, services and information.

“Commitment to having lots of good data is where you get the benefit from the AI system,” he said. “Working with farmers in Africa, students in Africa, patients in Africa, through governments, is how we achieve our ambitious 20-year goals and AI will help us accelerate those goals.”

Rather than replacing human expertise, Gates argued that AI can significantly boost productivity. “It can take the talent you have and allow them to be four times more productive,” he said.

He highlighted Rwanda as an example of a country making progress in building the data systems required for effective AI deployment. During a recent visit, Gates said he was encouraged by efforts to consolidate healthcare information to track disease patterns, monitor health workers and improve decision-making.

Gates believes agriculture could be one of the sectors to benefit most from AI, particularly through tools that interact with farmers in local languages and provide guidance that can improve productivity. Given agriculture’s importance as a source of employment and income across Africa, such gains could have significant economic benefits.

The Microsoft co-founder argued that AI has the potential to narrow global inequality, but only if governments and technology companies invest in the data, language and policy foundations required for the technology to work effectively. The foundation’s funding will also support projects in countries such as India, where digital systems are already being deployed at scale in agriculture.

A major challenge, Gates said, is the limited representation of African languages in today’s leading AI models. Even in relatively advanced digital economies such as Kenya and Rwanda, users still encounter errors and inconsistent results when interacting with AI systems.

To address the gap, the Gates Foundation is working with AI companies and other partners to collect African-language data and make it publicly available. The aim is to improve support for languages spoken by at least one million people and ensure that both open and proprietary AI models can serve African users more effectively.

Gates identified India, Singapore and Rwanda as early examples of governments moving decisively to build the foundations for AI adoption. For Africa, he said, fragmented administrative systems and incomplete records make deployment more challenging, but also increase the potential value of AI if governments strengthen data collection and governance.

“The African languages today are not well represented in these models,” Gates said. Ensuring that African data and languages are properly incorporated into AI systems, he added, will be critical to preventing the continent from being left behind as the technology advances.