Hello and welcome to Eye on AI.
With AI policy news out of the U.S. and Europe making headlines almost daily, it’s vital to keep an eye on how these issues are unfolding across the rest of the world, too. This week, we’re turning our attention to The African Union’s session on digital transformation, which convened leaders from all 55 African nations for four days of discussion on the continent’s digital future and AI strategy.
Held this past week in Ethiopia, the summit kicked off with three days of expert meetings, where the Draft Conceptual Framework of the Continental Strategy on Artificial Intelligence was the main item on the AI agenda. First drafted in August and still in development, the framework is intended to shape an ethical and economically fruitful AI strategy for the continent and address key sectors that can benefit from the technology including education, health care, agriculture, and finance. The session provided space for continued deliberations around the framework, including establishing its defining principles and strategic objectives and addressing aspects related to security and responsible uses of AI.
Overall, the members held up AI as crucial to attaining the continent’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Agenda 2063, a 50-year development plan described as Africa’s “blueprint” for achieving goals around economic development, political independence from foreign powers, democracy, gender equality, and the strengthening of African cultural identity.
“AI is important to Africa because of its economic, social, political and geopolitical impact. AI technologies can stimulate economic growth by creating new industries, driving innovation, and generating employment opportunities. It can also support education and the preservation of African languages,” reads a press release from the African Union about the session.
The meetings concluded with member states committing to promote digitalization efforts toward climate change, infrastructural development, and energy. The draft declaration around this agreement also covered issues around data governance being made increasingly urgent by the proliferation of AI, requiring the African Union to support member states in developing national data governance systems and capabilities.
After being largely absent from the internet revolution, African national and technology leaders know there's massive opportunity in AI. But while there is a bustling scene of AI startups, groups, and conferences on the continent, the tech behemoths from elsewhere on the globe have largely set the stage and reaped the benefits thus far. Evidence has shown that white, Western concepts are overly represented in training data for AI models and lead to skewed outputs, thus undermining the usefulness for other populations and opening the doors to potential harms. At the same time, the U.S., many European nations, and groups like the G7 are coming together to make vital decisions around global AI policy without significant representation from the African continent.
Africa has also experienced significant brain drain in AI as deeply resourced and well-paying tech companies lure talent abroad. A 2022 survey of founders who are members of the nonprofit Black in AI, for example, revealed that while the majority were born in sub-Saharan Africa, roughly half attended graduate schools in North America and have since remained there for work, according to Wired.
At the same time, data labelers in countries such as Kenya and Uganda have been integral to not only creating some of the leading foundation models from companies like Google and OpenAI but also performing the mentally grueling work of training the models not to produce violent and other disturbing content. These AI workers, who typically earn minuscule pay, aren’t reaping any of the technology’s rewards.
“Digitalization is one of the greatest transformative opportunities of our time. Yet, too few people can truly access its benefits on our continent,” said Amani Abou-Zeid, Commissioner for Infrastructure and Energy of the African Union Commission, during opening remarks on the final day of the event.
And with that, here’s the rest of this week’s AI news.
Sage Lazzaro
sage.lazzaro@consultant.fortune.com
sagelazzaro.com
