Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest regional scores and gains least from a faster takeoff: with the Caribbean, it is one of two regions whose GDP-weighted growth is about the same under Fast as under Gradual, while every other region grows at least 40% faster under Fast. Fast gives greater weight to compute, capital and geopolitical access, where the region scores lowest. Roughly 600 million people lack electricity and the region holds less than 1% of global data center capacity, while its workforce is growing faster than that of any other region. The projections used here show Nigeria adding more people by 2045 than Germany’s current population. Results differ across the forty countries. South Africa and Kenya have substantial digital economies; Senegal, Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire show selective adoption; and Nigeria and Ethiopia combine large young populations with exposure if AI substitutes for labor. Nigeria, Kenya and South Africa are its three Regional leaders: the largest economies in their subregions, and hosts to most of its data centers. Eleven states, among them DR Congo, Chad and the military governments of Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, fall in the High-risk / volatile archetype because conflict, coups or weak state capacity constrain growth before technology does. Mobile money demonstrates the possibility of technological leapfrogging, but compute capacity has not expanded on a comparable scale. Across all three scenarios, expanding electricity, connectivity and device access produces the largest modeled improvement for the region, and the twenty years before Gradual reaches maturity provide the lowest-cost period in which to act.