Responsible AI in Sub-Saharan Africa – Landscape and General State of Play

The state of artificial intelligence (AI) in Africa has revealed the uneven pace of its development and shown the need for African innovators, policy makers, social movements, and academic institutions to ramp up their engagement in the field of AI. While AI presents an enormous opportunity to dramatically contribute to a broad range of sustainable development goals such as reducing poverty and hunger, quality of education for all, clean water and sanitation, a!ordable and clean energy, and peace justice and strong institutions , Africa is not able to take full advantage. When measured on 1 government AI readiness, the African continent is among the lowest-scoring regions on average, in part due to few countries in the region having set out their vision for the implementation of AI. A lack of preparedness to harness the tools that widespread 2 adoption of AI would bring hampers the introduction of useful AI-based interventions that would solve many of Africa’s most pressing social and economic problems. This reality could potentially entrench economic inequality and render obsolete already poor public services. Notwithstanding this bleak picture, an AI ecosystem exists in Africa, with evidence of pockets of activity that could be prioritized, coordinated, and funded to result in an energized and productive AI infrastructure. Because Africa is lagging behind most of the world, its nascent, home-grown AI activities can often benefit from the support of international development partners and international technology firms, in addition to support from local government and African philanthropists. A diversified stream of funding to the ecosystem would go a long way to ensuring local leadership and ownership of AI innovation — in contrast to a narrative of external funding, which could open up the possibilities for an external agenda.