Africa’s AI Strategies Cannot Say No

(Samuel W. Ugwumba – Just Security) African countries are building their AI governance frameworks at remarkable speed. Zimbabwe launched its National AI Strategy on March 14. Ghana’s National AI strategy received cabinet approval in February. Nigeria, Kenya, and Rwanda have all adopted strategies over the past three years. And the African Union’s (AU) Continental AI Strategy was endorsed in July 2024. In every case, the organizing concept is “development.” And in every case, “development” is failing to do the one thing that governance must: protect the people these frameworks claim to serve. This pattern is not new. For decades, foreign companies in Africa have extracted resources—minerals, data, labor—under arrangements that the framework of so-called “development” has classified as partnership. Now, AI governance is reproducing the same dynamic at a continental scale, under the guise of development, in a way that portrays extractive relationships as progress—reminiscent of how the original scramble for Africa was legitimized by the language of civilization, and a parallel to other corporate practices on the continent. – Africa’s AI Strategies Cannot Say No