The African Development Bank (AfDB) Group is rolling out a bold $6 billion investment strategy to transform Africa’s fragile healthcare systems and reduce the continent’s reliance on imported drugs.

The initiative, unveiled at the 2025 AfDB Annual Meetings in Abidjan, marks one of the most ambitious continent-wide health interventions in recent memory—divided into two $3 billion programmes targeting infrastructure and local pharmaceutical manufacturing.

AfDB President Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, while presenting his 10-year scorecard, emphasized that the investment was already underway, describing it as a critical step toward ensuring Africa can both deliver and produce healthcare solutions at scale.

“Today, the African Development Bank Group is implementing a $3 billion programme for quality health infrastructure and a $3 billion programme for the development of local pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity in Africa,” Adesina announced.

Central to this vision is the newly established African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, an institution designed to break Africa’s historical exclusion from proprietary pharmaceutical technologies. The foundation will help African countries gain access to intellectual property rights and safeguard essential manufacturing know-how for medicines and vaccines.

Adesina’s remarks came as the Bank marked what he called “a decade of delivery,” particularly in agriculture, food security, and energy access—three areas where the AfDB says it has either mitigated or outright reversed looming crises.

The Bank’s Feed Africa strategy, launched in response to growing food insecurity and exacerbated by the war in Ukraine, reportedly helped 104 million Africans achieve food security. The Bank said its interventions also gave 13 million farmers access to improved agricultural technologies across the continent.

When the war in Ukraine triggered fears of a food crisis due to blocked exports of wheat, maize, and oilseeds, the AfDB moved swiftly with a $1.5 billion emergency food production facility. According to Adesina, the facility exceeded expectations.

He said in just two years, our support allowed 14 million farmers across 30 countries to have access to improved seeds and fertilizers. This led to the production of 44 million tons of food—116% above the target—worth $17.3 billion.

Ethiopia’s Wheat Revolution and a $72 Billion Food Pledge

One standout example is Ethiopia, which expanded its heat-tolerant wheat-producing areas from just 5,000 hectares in 2018 to more than 650,000 hectares by 2023. The result: self-sufficiency in wheat within four years—a feat that was once seen as far-fetched in a region traditionally reliant on imports.

The momentum gained from such successes was evident at the Feed Africa Summit in Dakar, where over 30 African leaders signed the Food and Agriculture Delivery Compacts. The summit mobilized a staggering $72 billion in global pledges to back national food security agendas, which were later endorsed by the African Union.

Energy Access Push Gains Steam

Buoyed by gains in agriculture, the AfDB is now turning its attention to another foundational issue—energy. In partnership with the World Bank, the Bank launched Mission 300, an ambitious drive to connect 300 million people to electricity by 2030.

This culminated in the Africa Energy Summit in Dar es Salaam, co-chaired by Tanzanian President Samia Suluhu Hassan, where more than 48 African countries endorsed the Dar es Salaam Declaration on Energy Access.

“Leaders at the summit unanimously endorsed the Dar es Salaam Declaration on Energy Access, with the full support of the African Union,’’ Adesina said.

The Declaration reflects a rare continent-wide consensus to accelerate energy delivery through a combination of national policy shifts, regional electricity grid interconnections, and increased investment in renewables and transmission infrastructure. The Bank reported that $55 billion has already been mobilized to support these efforts.

A Coordinated Future

Adesina’s report card paints a picture of an institution not merely reacting to crises but proactively reshaping the African development narrative—from health and food to energy. The Bank is banking on high-level coordination and massive financial commitments to drive systemic changes across sectors.

With the launch of the African Pharmaceutical Technology Foundation, a major step has been taken to change how the continent responds to health emergencies—ending dependence on imported vaccines and treatments that became painfully evident during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The broader investment push underlines a coordinated, long-haul approach by the AfDB to ensure that Africa’s economic growth is not only resilient but also anchored in self-reliance and innovation.

Meta’s artificial intelligence assistant has surpassed one billion monthly active users, CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced during the company’s annual shareholder meeting.

The milestone, first reported by CNBC, represents a doubling of Meta AI’s user base since September 2024, when the company last disclosed it had 500 million active users.

The growth cements Meta AI as one of the most widely adopted consumer-facing AI platforms in the world and underlines Meta’s unique advantage: the unmatched reach of its social media empire.

Social Media Synergy Accelerates Meta AI Growth

Meta’s success in rapidly onboarding users to its AI assistant is closely tied to its control of some of the most widely used social platforms globally—Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger. The company has capitalized on its massive user base by providing seamless access to AI tools across platforms that users already depend on daily, embedding the assistant directly into these services and recently launching a standalone Meta AI app.

“The focus for this year is deepening the experience and making Meta AI the leading personal AI with an emphasis on personalization, voice conversations, and entertainment,” Zuckerberg told shareholders.

Meta has made it clear that it’s not just competing to be first—it wants to dominate the AI space by making its assistant a routine part of how people interact online. This strategic integration gives Meta an advantage many of its rivals can’t match.

Monetization on the Horizon

Zuckerberg also hinted at future monetization models for Meta AI, which has so far remained free to users. The company is exploring inserting paid recommendations and offering a subscription service for those who want access to more powerful AI capabilities—particularly those requiring more computational resources.

“If we’re delivering value to people, there will be opportunities to either insert paid recommendations or offer subscriptions so that people can pay to use more compute,” he said.

Such a move would position Meta AI to go head-to-head with other leading AI platforms like OpenAI’s ChatGPT, which already offers a paid tier to access GPT-4 and other advanced tools.

The Broader AI Battle: Leverage is King

Meta isn’t the only player using platform leverage to drive AI adoption. Elon Musk’s xAI, still in its early stages, is following a similar path by integrating its chatbot, Grok, directly into X (formerly Twitter), which Musk owns. The tactic gives xAI instant distribution and feedback loops across millions of users, a powerful boost in an increasingly competitive field.

This is a key edge that OpenAI currently lacks. Despite its leading technical position and widespread name recognition, OpenAI does not have a proprietary social media platform to deploy its assistant at scale. As competition heats up, OpenAI appears to be aware of the gap.

In recent months, there have been signals that OpenAI is exploring ways to build or acquire a social network of its own. The company understands that while superior AI models are essential, they aren’t enough to win the race without mass user engagement and data streams that platforms like Meta and X can readily supply.

As the AI assistant space moves from novelty to necessity, distribution power may prove as decisive as technical prowess. With Meta’s user base now surpassing the billion mark, the company is positioned not only as a front-runner in AI—but potentially the first to truly embed it into daily digital life at scale.

The inevitability of AI monetization also means that Meta’s control of both infrastructure and distribution puts it in a rare position to turn scale into sustained revenue.

Salesforce’s aggressive artificial intelligence push isn’t just limited to its products. Speaking at a quarterly earnings call this week, Chief Operating and Financial Officer Robin Washington said the company has “reduced some of (its) hiring needs” as it outsources more work to AI. Engineering and customer service are seeing the most movement, and Washington says 500 customer service employees will be reassigned to other roles. Hiring hasn’t slowed down in all departments, however: Salesforce plans to beef up its sales ranks by 22%.