Policy Brief No. 219 — January 2026
Technology at the Negotiating Table: Can AI Enhance Peace Processes in Africa? Jon Temin
Key Points → Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to be a valuable tool for mediators and diplomats, making their work to end deadly conflicts more effective and efficient. Use cases range from early warning to drafting peace agreement text to monitoring agreement implementation. → One of the most promising potential uses is in making peace processes more inclusive, by using AI to gather, analyze and summarize citizens’ perspectives at scale, and then bringing those views to the negotiating table. → But with these potential uses come substantial obstacles and risks, notably the limited internet connectivity available to people directly affected by conflict and the relative dearth of online material in African languages for AI tools to learn from and utilize, as well as associated concerns about data and algorithmic bias and data sovereignty.
Introduction Violent conflicts kill, displace and irreparably harm millions of Africans every year. One measure of the toll can be found in forced displacement, often arising from violence: according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees ([UNHCR] 2024), in 2024 Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 37 percent of all people forcibly displaced worldwide, though the region is home to only about 15 percent of the global population. Africa is the scene of several of humanity’s most destructive conflicts: the civil war in Sudan that started in 2023 has killed between 150,000 and 200,000 people by some estimates; violence in Ethiopia that began escalating starting in 2020 is estimated to have taken 300,000 to 500,000 or more lives; and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), more than 5.6 million people are internally displaced, largely as a result of violence. Other countries, including Burkina Faso, Mali, Nigeria, Somalia and South Sudan, are the scenes of frequent atrocities perpetrated by government forces and armed groups. And these violent conflict trends on the continent show no appreciable sign of improving.