Africa is racing to establish rules governing artificial intelligence (AI), but questions remain about whether ordinary citizens have a meaningful voice in shaping the technologies and policies that will increasingly influence their lives.
Africa accounts for approximately 18 per cent of the world’s population but holds an estimated 0.6 per cent of global data centre capacity, compared with nearly 45 per cent in the United States, according to data from the Africa Data Centres Association and the World Economic Forum.
A 2026 industry study also found that outside South Africa, only about a third of the continent’s built data centre capacity is fully utilised.
While the infrastructure gap attracts significant attention, a deeper challenge remains: ensuring Africans have a meaningful say in determining how AI technologies are developed, governed and used.
When the African Union (AU) adopted its Continental AI Strategy in July 2024, only six African countries, Algeria, Benin, Egypt, Mauritius, Rwanda and Senegal, had standalone national AI strategies. Globally, 67 countries had developed national AI frameworks between 2017 and 2023.
With the AU’s first implementation phase covering 2025 and 2026, governments are moving to develop policies focused largely on economic growth, investment and competitiveness ahead of a scheduled midterm review in 2027.
However, concerns over representation remain, particularly in language technology. A 2025 study of major language models found that only 42 of Africa’s approximately 2,000 languages were supported, with just four, Amharic, Swahili, Afrikaans and Malagasy, receiving consistent coverage.
This leaves more than 98 per cent of African languages without adequate support, a gap researchers have described as “language data flaring”.
Kenya offers a glimpse of the challenges facing the continent as AI becomes increasingly influential in public debate and electoral politics.
Approximately 40 per cent of registered voters in Kenya are aged between 18 and 34, while Trust Lab researchers identified 17 major coordinated disinformation campaigns in 2025 alone.
The growing use of AI to generate political content has added to concerns about electoral integrity ahead of the 2027 General Election.
Anthropic’s recent misuse report documented the removal of an account used by a single actor to mass-produce Kenyan political content, highlighting how AI can be used to generate misleading material and potentially create a false impression of public support.
Against this backdrop, the Samawati Collective has established the Africa Public Interest AI Council (APiAC), with support from the Open Society Foundation, to strengthen public-interest perspectives in Africa’s AI governance debate.
The council brings together six multidisciplinary experts working across journalism, governance, open technology, language AI, data infrastructure and fintech. Its members are Kofi Yeboah, John-Allan Namu, Maha Jouini, Chido Dzinotyiwei, Charlette N’Guessan and Obinna Okerekeocha.
Operating on an initial two-year term, the council will hold quarterly meetings and commission research, convene public discussions, issue policy advisories to governments and other councils, and provide public-interest input into philanthropic investment decisions.
APiAC will not operate as a regulator or an implementing agency. Instead, it aims to provide independent scrutiny of AI policy and keep a central question at the heart of the continent’s technological transition: whether AI is expanding ordinary Africans’ agency, democratic participation, cultural expression and shared prosperity.
“We kept seeing the same pattern in rooms where AI strategy was being decided,” said Maurice Otieno, co-founder and executive director of the Samawati Collective.
“Plenty of expertise on infrastructure, investment and regulation, and very little on what any of it means for ordinary people. We didn’t want to build another institution to fill that gap. We wanted a small group of independent minds who could say, in public, what others in those rooms can’t or won’t.”
Kofi Yeboah, programme officer at the Mozilla Foundation, said the debate should extend beyond infrastructure investment to address who shapes the rules governing AI.
“The infrastructure gap gets all the headlines, but a gap in who decides is harder to close,” he said. “Openness and accountability can’t be bolted on after the systems are built. Africa has to help write those norms.”
John-Allan Namu, founder and journalist at Africa Uncensored Limited, said the questions of power and accountability now extend to algorithms that influence the information voters encounter.
“My job is to ask who holds power and who answers for it,” he said. “Those questions now apply to algorithms that shape what voters see. Newsrooms need to be asking them before 2027, not after.”
Maha Jouini, an AI governance expert and founder of Chifaa, said the effectiveness of national AI frameworks should be measured by how well they protect vulnerable members of society.
“Every government is drafting a framework right now,” she said. “The test of each one is simple: does it protect the person with the least power? Governance isn’t a brake. It’s how a society decides what innovation is for.”
Chido Dzinotyiwei, co-founder and chief executive officer of Vambo AI, said language inclusion must be considered from the earliest stages of AI development.
“If a model can’t follow how people actually speak, it isn’t serving them, however advanced it is,” he said. “That has to be a design decision from the start.”
Charlette N’Guessan, lead for data solutions, AI ecosystem and government partnerships at Amini, and founder of Afrokwary, said African countries must address questions of data ownership and the distribution of economic benefits.
“Data is infrastructure, and the continent is mostly a source of it,” she said. “Who collects it, who owns it, and who benefits will decide whether Africa takes part in this economy or just supplies it.”
Obinna Okerekeocha, founder of the Naija AI Film Festival, said transparency would be essential to building public trust in AI-powered systems.
“Millions of Africans already depend on digital systems that decide whether they can save, borrow, or trade,” he said. “Trust comes from explaining things honestly. AI will earn it or lose it the same way.”
The Samawati Collective said APiAC would operate independently of funders, governments and commercial entities, with its positions determined by its members and a commitment to public transparency over consensus.
