By Zakarie Hassan - Reporter
Seoul, South Korea, 13 Setember 2026 - Somalia's Finance Minister, Bihi Iman Egeh, told African and Korean officials in Seoul that Somalia's coastline and access to international submarine fibre optic cables position the country to become a digital gateway for the Horn of Africa.
Egeh made the remarks on Wednesday at the 8th Korea-Africa Economic Cooperation, KOAFEC, Ministerial Conference at the Grand Walkerhill Seoul, where finance and ICT officials from 45 African countries gathered under the theme “Harnessing AI and Digital Infrastructure for Africa's Transformation.”
“With our extensive coastline and access to international submarine fibre-optic cables, Somalia can become a digital gateway for the Horn of Africa,” Egeh said, describing the country as sitting at a “geostrategic gateway connecting Africa, the Middle East and major global trade and data routes.”
He said Africa should treat digital infrastructure, energy, broadband, data systems and computing capacity, as core economic infrastructure rather than a tool built for AI alone. “Just as roads, ports and electricity enabled previous waves of transformation,” he said, digital infrastructure would increasingly determine “investment, productivity and competitiveness.”
Egeh pointed to Somalia's young, digitally savvy population, competitive telecommunications sector and widespread mobile money use as a foundation the country now needs to scale through deeper infrastructure connecting businesses to finance and markets.
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He linked Somalia's ambitions to the Horn of Africa Initiative, a regional platform he said is building shared fibre networks, digital infrastructure and interoperable systems among Horn of Africa countries. Combined with the African Continental Free Trade Area, he said, this could expand cross-border payments, trade and data flows. “Regional integration gives us scale,” Egeh said.
He added that partnerships with countries such as Korea would help in “mobilizing investment, technology, knowledge and skills to build bankable infrastructure” across the region, while cautioning that African governments must be deliberate about who owns that infrastructure and where the resulting value is retained.
The conference, marking KOAFEC's 20th anniversary, closed with the adoption of the 2026 KOAFEC Joint Declaration and a two-year action plan covering AI, digital transformation and infrastructure projects across the continent, alongside South Korea's K-AI Package, which pairs infrastructure financing with AI solutions and power supply.