The Africa Declaration on Artificial Intelligence /La Déclaration Africaine sur l'Intelligence Artificielle

 

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On 4 April 2025, a large number of African States signed The Africa Declaration on Artificial Intelligence /La Déclaration Africaine sur l'Intelligence Artificielle. The Declaration offers a framework for steps toward fulfilling a unified AI strategy. States pledged $60 billion toward infrastructure and talent development. It has been both praised and criticized, and sometimes simultaneously. Steve Mbego writing for CIO Africa declared the Africa Declaration on Artificial Intelligence "a sweeping vision document that reads like both a manifesto and a mission statement for the continent’s digital future. It’s bold. It’s comprehensive. It’s also very, very fluffy in parts." (Africa’s AI Declaration Is A Good Start, But Now Comes The Hard Part).

It does offer up a bit of everything.  But that is both necessary and to be expected.  It offers the usual. Its core principles section emphasizes strategic development (reflecting Africa’s strategic priorities, shared values, and diverse cultural contexts), collaboration (public and private with emphasis on development with African characteristics), and safeguard oriented  objectives (centering human rights, transparency and sustainability). The objectives follow:

 2.2.1. To leverage the potential of AI to drive innovation and competitiveness to advance Africa’s economies, industries, and societies. 2.2.2. To position Africa as a global leader in ethical, trustworthy, and inclusive AI adoption. 2.2.3. To foster the sustainable and responsible design, development, deployment, use, and governance of AI technologies in Africa.

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 These are all meant to provide a principled and objectives based form to the key commitments adopted in Article 3 (¶¶3.1-3.7): talent development; data protection and exploitation; development of an Africa wide architecture for computing infrastructure; developing markets, market participants (incubators, etc.)  and exploiting the incentives built into procurement programs (adopting "an “Africa-first” approach to AI procurement and leverage African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) to
facilitate cross-border scaling", ¶3.4.2 ); investing (pledging anyway) $60 billion toward these goals; and elaborating a regulatory architecture that will make all of this possible. Overseeing all of this at a continental level will be an "Africa AI Council, under the leadership of the Smart Africa Steering Committee which is co-chaired by the African Union Commission and the International Telecommunications Union, to ensure high-level engagement and strategic alignment with continental and global digital transformation efforts." (¶3.7).

This is an ambitious project. It is also one that might create a large enough space where African States can carve a place for their own development of AI ecologies not entirely dominated b the larger players, each of which has their own agendas firmly in mind as they extend helping hands.  

Partnership on AI saw "a growing focus on 3 core areas that were highlighted by the Declaration, President Kagame and government leaders, industry, and civil society from the continent:

1. Digital Public / Physical infrastructure: Enhancing Africa’s digital and physical infrastructure is crucial to supporting AI development in the region. This includes significant investments in data centers, which will boost productivity, support businesses and make Africa economically competitive in the future and that challenges related to siloed datasets are overcome through greater continental alignment and open data. Our community of partners applauded these critical milestones at our breakfast convening. We also noted that as these initiatives are implemented we must ensure that interdisciplinary and public-private dialogues, which include civil society, are in place to ensure input from local researchers and citizens.
2. Ecosystem building: There is a pressing need to foster and grow Africa’s local AI ecosystem, including through scaling startups, developing skills and growing the AI focused workforce. Discussions at the summit emphasized the importance of multistakeholderism and building an ecosystem of interdisciplinary expertise to support the sustainable growth of safe and responsible AI.
3. Continental collaboration, alignment and integration: Overcoming regional silos and barriers to trade and AI development is necessary to foster unity across the continent, accelerate growth, intra-African collaboration and to harmonize governance frameworks. This includes putting mechanisms in place to support building local datasets." (Prioritizing Responsible AI in Africa )

The fulfillment of this vision  will be the next task.  The text of the Declaration follows.