In February, simply earlier than the AU’s AI coverage draft got here out, Shikoh Gitau, a pc scientist who began the Nairobi-based AI analysis lab Qubit Hub, revealed a paper arguing that Africa ought to prioritize the event of an AI trade earlier than making an attempt to control the expertise. 

“If we begin by regulating, we’re not going to determine the improvements and alternatives that exist for Africa,” says David Lemayian, a software program engineer and one of many paper’s co-authors.  

Okolo, who consulted on the AU-AI draft coverage, disagrees. Africa must be proactive in creating laws, Okolo says. She suggests African international locations reform present legal guidelines reminiscent of insurance policies on knowledge privateness and digital governance to handle AI. 

However Gitau is worried {that a} hasty method to regulating AI may hinder adoption of the expertise. And he or she says it’s crucial to construct homegrown AI with functions tailor-made for Africans to harness the facility of AI to enhance financial development. 

“Earlier than we put laws [in place], we have to do the laborious work of understanding the total spectrum of the expertise and spend money on constructing the African AI ecosystem,” she says.

Greater than 50 international locations and the EU have AI methods in place, and greater than 700 AI coverage initiatives have been applied since 2017, in response to the Organisation for Financial Co-operation and Improvement’s AI Coverage Observatory. However solely 5 of these initiatives are from Africa and not one of the OECD’s 38 member international locations are African.

Africa’s voices and views have largely been absent from world discussions on AI governance and regulation, says Melody Musoni, a coverage and digital governance knowledgeable at ECDPM, an independent-policy suppose tank in Brussels.   

“We should contribute our views and personal our regulatory frameworks,” says Musoni. “We need to be customary makers, not customary takers.”