Mauritius set out its national AI strategy in 2018, the first by an African country. Since then over a dozen African states have adopted national AI policies of some sort or another.
As a national policy plan, an AI strategy typically sets out the priorities and aspirations in achieving certain policy objectives.
At the continental level, the African Union has adopted an AI strategy.
Kenya and Ethiopia have tabled draft AI laws that set out how the countries want AI governed. Morocco, Egypt and Nigeria are already mulling the idea of AI legislation. The trend shows that policymakers are slowly turning their attention from unchecked enthusiasm about AI to reckoning with governing AI risks.
As technology law and policy scholars, our research explores the dynamics of and approaches to the governance of emerging technologies like AI. Our recent work explores the origins, nature and scope of AI governance initiatives in Africa. We found a number of common threads in recent policy and legislative exercises. One such trend is for African states to adopt the European Union’s approach to AI regulation. But this needs to be called into question.
