Infrastructure Investment, National AI Strategy, and the Geopolitics of Digital Capacity

Olaniyi Evans

Hequation Review, 2026, vol. 2, issue 1, 13-18

Abstract: A global race for sovereign artificial intelligence compute capacity is reshaping capital flows, industrial policy, and geopolitical leverage. This article examines four major initiatives announced in 2025-2026: India's $240 billion AI Impact Summit commitments, South Korea's 30-trillion-won Public Growth Fund allocation, Microsoft's $2.2 billion Malaysia deployment, and Africa's proposed $60 billion AI Fund. Using a dual policy-investment analytical lens, it finds that sovereign compute initiatives in the Global South remain structurally contingent on foreign hardware and hyperscaler platforms. The binding constraint is not capital pledges but execution capacity, institutional governance, and energy availability.

Keywords: sovereign AI; compute infrastructure; digital industrialisation; AI investment; Global South technology policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F52 H24 L86 O25 O38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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