Policy Brief No. 205 — August 2025
Modest Germinations: Toward Decoloniality in AI Governance in Africa Jake Okechukwu Effoduh Key Points → Regional, state and multilateral artificial intelligence (AI) governing schemes cater to the peculiar concerns of participating entities. While states from, and entities domiciled in, the Global North dominate most of the key arrangements in this regard, a handful of African states (many of them leaders in AI discourse on the continent) also participate meaningfully in a number of multilateral agreements. Accordingly, strategies and procedures enacted under these agreements often shape AI governance on the African continent. → African states have implemented, or are in the process of implementing, AI-governing instruments at both the national and regional levels. An important theme common to most of these instruments is the leveraging of AI technologies to improve the conditions of African peoples. → While there is a noticeable inclination toward correcting for colonially inflected marginalization undergirding AI governance on the continent, there is more room for African states to take bold steps toward placing decolonial praxes at the centre of global and national AI governance both nationally and continentally.
Introduction The Third Industrial Revolution met most countries on the African continent in the nascent stages of their independence and post-colonial development. By dint of this historical fact, these countries started out backfooted in the digital revolution of the mid- to late twentieth century. But the Industrial Revolution of the twenty-first century (the Fourth Industrial Revolution) is greeted by countries that have matured in their post-colonial life. States on the African continent are positioning themselves as equal players invested in securing appropriate governing frameworks for AI. They are taking measured steps, both nationally and continentally, toward balancing the gains of AI adoption while mitigating the risks that naturally attend any form of innovation. To effectively strike this balance, the peculiar subjectivities of African peoples, including the ongoing effects of Western colonialism on the continent, are relevant considerations for regulatory strategies targeting AI technology. Africa-focused approaches will inevitably map onto other regional, multilateral and global governing schemes in many aspects, but they are also distinctive in other important ways. This policy brief takes a close eye to major AI governing frameworks around the world that impact governance in Africa. It also studies governance schemes that have emerged from the continent to distill the prescriptions that are common to them, as well as the norms, values and strategies that undergird these prescriptions. It