Back from GITEX Africa 2026 in Marrakech: some thoughts

Let me start with a small disclaimer: age has a curious tendency to make us slightly more critical. So, among all the enthusiastic and glowing comments, mine may perhaps sound a little more… out of tune.

The first word that comes to mind when I think about this edition of GITEX AFRICA is… confusion.

And I am not talking about the crowds in the aisles, that kind of confusion is always welcome.

I mean the much more interesting kind: the uncertainty that comes from trying to understand where the IT market is really heading, and what companies, investors and technology providers should be planning for over the medium term.

So, what seemed to dominate this year?

1) Hardware.
Until a couple of years ago, hardware and software still appeared to be travelling on fairly parallel tracks. Today, hardware seems to have taken a rather decisive lead.

Performance. Computing power. Data centres.

These were, to my eyes, some of the strongest pillars of this edition of GITEX Africa.

There were also a few humanoid robots here and there – including a blond one which, at one point, collapsed to the floor with the elegance of a slightly surprised seal. No offence intended to either the robot or the seal.

2) Cybersecurity.
A great deal of it.

In fact, I cannot remember seeing so many cybersecurity propositions concentrated in one place before. It was clearly one of the dominant themes of the event.

Everything else, at least from my perspective, felt somewhat secondary compared with these two major areas.

Yes, there was still plenty of discussion around Artificial Intelligence – but the tone has changed.

AI is no longer being presented as the destination.

We are already beyond that stage.

Increasingly, companies are presenting technologies and solutions in which AI is simply assumed to be embedded from the outset, almost as a standard component of the product.

Whether all of those solutions are equally mature, properly validated or genuinely useful is, of course, another question – and one I will politely leave open.

Which brings me to the obvious question.

Today, we are fortunate to be extremely busy, still with a significant share of our work coming from e-commerce and digital development.

But what will we be doing one year from now?

That, in my view, is the real question.

And probably the most useful one to bring home from events such as GITEX Africa.

In the meantime, a very sincere thank you to the entire teams at Medlit Tech and WALIT for patiently listening to my doubts, questions and endless reflections, and for accompanying me on yet another international journey.

A special thank you to Luca Romanello, Paolo Segat, Fatima Ezzahra Achaiba, Nouha BEN MOUSSA, Zainab Jinari and Nour El-houda Eljebbouri.

The market is changing quickly.

Which is precisely why events like this are useful: not because they give us all the answers, but because they force us to ask better questions.