As we celebrate Africa Month, I feel an urgent sense of responsibility to voice what too many policymakers still overlook: Africa’s future cannot be copy-pasted from global AI narratives. Artificial Intelligence is not just a tool of automation — it is a force reshaping power, identity, economy, and ethics. And yet, Africa remains on the margins of this transformation.
While the current AI governance ecosystem is expanding rapidly, it is overwhelmingly shaped by institutions and ideologies from the Global North — North America, Europe, and parts of Asia. These frameworks reflect the sociopolitical concerns, economic priorities, and philosophical values of their creators. Meanwhile, Africa — despite being a fast-digitizing continent — has not yet produced a convincing, unified AI governance narrative rooted in our values, our social contexts, and our sustainable development ambitions.
Africa’s AI Paradox: Data-Rich, Power-Poor
We are rich in data but poor in agency. From mobile penetration and fintech innovations to climate sensors and genomics, African nations are generating enormous datasets. Yet over 80% of this infrastructure depends on foreign platforms (Research ICT Africa, 2023). Our data is extracted, processed, and monetized elsewhere. The result? Algorithmic systems trained on non-African realities leading to biased outcomes that are culturally insensitive or even harmful.
We are not simply importing software; we are importing systems of logic, values, and control. Whether it’s facial recognition that misidentifies Black faces or automated loan approvals that silently exclude women and youth — these issues are not hypothetical. They are happening now, quietly, algorithmically.
The Strategic Risks of Ethical Exclusion
Without governance frameworks grounded in our realities, Africa risks becoming a passive consumer of AI innovations rather than an active, sovereign co-creator. We must confront the asymmetry of power in AI development, or the fourth industrial revolution will deepen the global inequalities created by the first three.
Let us not forget: AI is value-laden. It reflects the philosophies and politics of those who design and regulate it. If we continue relying on imported models without critique or contextualization, Africa will face AI systems that undermine our autonomy, erode our cultures, and widen the digital divide.
Responsible AI for the SDGs: Urgency, Not Option
The promise of AI for sustainable development is real. AI is already helping diagnose rare diseases, predict droughts, and optimize agricultural productivity across parts of Africa. But this potential comes with high stakes.
According to Vinuesa et al. (2020), AI can enable 134 of the 169 SDG targets, but it can also inhibit 59 of them — particularly in areas like inequality, privacy, and ethical oversight. In Africa, these risks are magnified by weak regulatory environments, infrastructure gaps, and limited local capacity.
This is why I argue for a paradigm shift: we need a  responsible African AI governance framework  that embeds our communal values, anticipates ethical risks, and empowers citizens — especially women and marginalized groups — to shape our AI future.
The Ubuntu Principle: An African Ethical Framework
Ubuntu, our philosophy of shared humanity — “I am because we are” — must guide how we design, deploy, and regulate AI. This means promoting transparency, collective good, inclusivity, and justice in digital systems. Our approach must center on:
From Fragmentation to Coordination: The Governance Gap
Africa’s AI policy landscape is fragmented and underdeveloped. As of 2024, only a handful of countries — Mauritius, Egypt, Tunisia, South Africa — have published national AI strategies. Many others lack basic legal frameworks for data protection, ethical AI, or digital rights.
Yet we have models to draw from. The African Union’s Digital Transformation Strategy (2020–2030) is a solid start, but implementation lags. We need to build on this momentum by creating a  Continental Charter on AI and Data Sovereignty , with five core pillars:

1. Data Ownership & Protection : Africans must own their data, with rights to consent, transparency, and redress.
2. Ethical AI Guidelines : Built on human rights and Ubuntu, to inform public procurement and private sector innovation.
3. Public AI Infrastructure : Investments in open-source platforms and data commons to prevent monopolies.
4. Regional AI Councils : To oversee strategy, funding, and cross-border coordination.
5. AI Education for All : From primary schools to universities, we must embed AI literacy across generations.

Tunisia to South Africa: Seeds of Sovereign Innovation
As a Tunisian, I have witnessed how our nation — despite resource limitations — is stepping into the AI conversation with vision and urgency. We are developing ethical frameworks, piloting AI tools in healthcare and agriculture, and engaging with international networks. Similarly, South Africa, Kenya, and Ghana are building civic tech ecosystems and AI regulatory sandboxes.
But these scattered efforts are not enough. Africa needs a continental coalition, built not only on shared technological goals, but on  sovereign innovation  — innovation that is culturally grounded, socially just, and democratically governed.
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The Time Is Now: A Continental Wake-Up Call
Africa must transition from being a testing ground for unregulated technologies to becoming the architect of its own AI future. This requires reclaiming control over our data, developing inclusive AI governance frameworks, and driving innovation that reflects our unique contexts and values.
The path forward is not about rejection of global technologies but rather thoughtful adaptation and sovereign innovation—creating AI systems that are rooted in dignity, equity, and collective resilience. By prioritizing African values, needs, and aspirations in our approach to AI, we can ensure these powerful technologies serve as tools for inclusive development rather than instruments of new forms of dependency.
Let 2025 mark the year Africa shifts decisively from passive technological adoption to sovereign digital innovation—charting a course that other emerging regions might follow.
This is not only about technology. It is about power, dignity, and destiny.
📢  Let’s build an Africa where Artificial Intelligence becomes African Intelligence — born from our resilience, shaped by our ethics, and driven by the dreams of our people.
Maha Jouini is an AI Policy Expert and advocate for ethical and inclusive technology.  
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Commercial Diplomacy Now ‘Core Focus of U.S. Engagement with Africa’
The Trump administration is adopting a new commercial diplomacy strategy for sub-Saharan Africa, the acting head of the Africa Bureau at the U.S. State Department, Ambassador Troy Fitrell, said in a briefing on Tuesday. Under the new policy, U.S. ambassadors in the region are tasked to “go out and find commercial opportunities” and “to find opportunities to advocate for American companies.” The envoys are also charged with identifying market reforms “needed to enhance the business environment” and engaging with governments on implementation. Fitrell hoped the new U.S. policy would attract private sector actors and “galvanise local economies”.
Liberia’s Health Sector ‘On The Brink’ – Report
A report by the international development agency ActionAid paints a dire picture of the country’s health sector, noting that 97 percent of workers earn wages too low to cover basic living expenses. The report, the “Human Cost of Public Sector Cuts in Africa,” assesses the state of health in Liberia and five other African nations. Most health workers surveyed in Liberia earn between U.S.$100 and $150 per month, “with no recent wage adjustments”, while inflation continues to rise. The situation has been made worse by the withdrawal of significant donor funding, the report states. It blames “restrictive fiscal policies” imposed by the International Monetary Fund for worsening the crisis.
Former DR Congo Prime Minister Sentenced to Hard Labour for Corruption
Former Democratic Republic of Congo Prime Minister Augustin Matata Ponyo was sentenced to ten years of forced labour for embezzling around $245 million of public funds, alongside Deogratias Mutombo, the former governor of the central bank, who received a five-year sentence. Ponyo ‘s lawyer said the ruling was “unfair and politically motivated”. The embezzled funds went to the Bukanga-Lonzo Agro-Industrial Park, a major agricultural project that addresses chronic food shortages.  Matata served as prime minister from 2012 to 2016 and now heads the country’s Leadership and Governance for Development party (LGD). Ponyo was the finance minister from 2010 to 2012 and received praise from the International Monetary Fund for stabilising the country’s economy at that time. The case has stretched over almost four years since the country’s Inspectorate General of Finance reported the theft from the Bukanga-Lonzo Agro-Industrial Park in 2020.
Former Rwandan First Lady Spared Trial in 1994 Genocide Case
Agathe Habyarimana, the 82-year-old widow of former Rwandan President Juvénal Habyarimana, avoided trial in France after investigating magistrates found insufficient evidence to charge her with complicity in the 1994 genocide. The former First Lady, who fled Rwanda with French assistance after her husband’s assassination triggered the mass killings, was under investigation after a complaint by a victims’ group. A French investigation into her alleged role began in 2008, and she was questioned as an “assisted witness”, a legal status between a witness and a suspect. French prosecutors argued she was part of the Hutu power circle that orchestrated the genocide, but the court ruled there was no “serious and consistent evidence” linking her to the atrocities. While the case could soon be dismissed, French anti-terror prosecutors appealed the decision, and a hearing date was set. Her lawyer welcomed the ruling and called for a swift end to the case.
University of Zimbabwe Replaces Striking Staff Amid Pay Dispute
The University of Zimbabwe (UZ) announced it would replace striking lecturers with part-time staff earning just US$5.50 per hour, of which 40% – equivalent to US$2.20 – would be paid in local currency and subject to income tax. The replacement process had already begun, with some part-time lecturers receiving employment letters. UZ lecturers had been on strike for about a month, demanding better pay and working conditions. According to the university, the pay rate included all teaching-related duties, such as preparation, marking, and setting examinations. The striking lecturers had watched their salaries collapse from a peak of US$3,000 to a meagre US$250.
Freelance Photojournalist Sheikho Killed in Sudan Drone Attack
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) called for an investigation into the May 18 killing of Sudanese freelance photojournalist Al-Shykh Al-Samany Saadaldyn Mousa Abdulla, known as “Sheikho,” who died in a suspected Rapid Support Forces (RSF) drone strike while covering an event organized by the pro-Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) Sudan Shield Forces in central eastern Sudan. The drone attack in the Al-Butna area also killed at least 7 soldiers from the Sudan Shield Forces and injured 14 others. Since the war erupted between the SAF and the RSF in April 2023, at least 12 other journalists and media workers have been killed in the country.
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Namibian President’s Inaugural Regional Trips Spark Debate
President Netumbo Nandi-Ndaitwah’s first international official trips since taking office have drawn mixed reactions from international relations experts and political analysts. Some praised her reaffirmation of Namibia’s regional foreign policy, while others question the real impact of such symbolic gestures. Nandi-Ndaitwah’s working tour included Angola, Botswana and Zambia, and aimed to deepen bilateral ties and push forward economic cooperation through joint infrastructure projects, trade facilitation and regional integration. Foreign policy analyst Marius Kudumo said the symbolic and strategic nature of the president’s first international engagements sends a clear message about her commitment to southern Africa, while political analyst Ndumba Kamwanyah said that the president’s diplomatic engagements are aimed at maintaining and possibly redefining Namibia’s foreign policy. Kamwanyah argued that while the rhetoric around economic cooperation and infrastructure development is welcome, it is not backed by a strong record of implementation.
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Debating Ideas reflects the values and editorial ethos of the African Arguments book series, publishing engaged, often radical, scholarship, original and activist writing from within the African continent and beyond. It offers debates and engagements, contexts and controversies, and reviews and responses flowing from the African Arguments books. It is edited and managed by the International African Institute, hosted at SOAS University of London, the owners of the book series of the same name.
More than ten years ago, I walked through the gates of one of Accra’s most prestigious technology incubators. I was beginning a five-month research internship at one of their start-ups. In the weeks that followed, I got swept up by local hubs, incubators’ bright colours, and ‘inspiring’ promises of how seizing individual responsibility for Africa’s digitalization through entrepreneurship would lead to individual and collective prosperity on the continent. Since the early 2000s transnational businesses and governments have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in the growth of technology hubs and incubators across Africa. These institutions claim to offer valuable training to digital entrepreneurs and accelerate start-up growth. They and their funders work from the presumption that (digital) entrepreneurship will help young African university graduates create skilled jobs for themselves and others, thus reducing the high youth unemployment rate in cities like Accra.
Entrepreneurs would sometimes speak of this promise of wealth in terms of the ‘African dream’, a spin on the promise of the American dream: that hard work and taking risks would be rewarded with a middle-class lifestyle. Hubs and incubators introduced them to Silicon Valley narratives about serial entrepreneurship: starting a new business after the old one had failed. These narratives normalize failure and hardship as an inevitable part of any digital entrepreneur’s (serial) start-up journey, providing the individual with valuable lessons that would eventually lead to them building a start-up generating millions in profits and fame. The journeys of Silicon Valley CEOs, such as Mark Zuckerberg, were commonly framed as success stories providing legitimacy to the pursuit of serial entrepreneurship. In their visits to incubators and hubs they presented themselves to African entrepreneurs as having begun their start-up journeys with very little, from tiny garages, ‘just like many Africans’, before emerging as tech billionaires through hard work and perseverance. Entrepreneurs were not encouraged to quit and little to no attention was paid to the negative long-term effects (repeated) failure could have on them and their families.
Gradually I started to hear the whispers of this dream’s nightmarish potential. When I returned to Accra’s tech hubs and incubators in 2018-19 for my PhD research, I was told many more sad and concerning stories. In my Africa article, I analyse some of these stories as providing insight in the downwardly mobile trajectories that chasing the promise of serial digital entrepreneurship can produce among the matrilineal Akan – the largest ethno-linguistic group in Ghana. Contributing to recent conceptualizations of middle-classness in Africa as an aspirational category, which (extended) families may collectively pursue, I conceptualize downward mobility as a slow process of de-kinning: becoming increasingly excluded from family networks of care and collective obligations to achieve middle-class lifestyles. For young Akan entrepreneurs, this de-kinning typically happened in two ways: not meeting the expectations of siblings and of potential partners in middle-class marriage.
Not ‘returning investment’ to siblings
Within Akan families, siblings are typically expected to provide each other with care in times of hardship and opportunities to achieve upward social mobility. The exact nature of these expectations depends on factors such as birth order and gender, with interventions varying throughout a person’s lifetime. As the young entrepreneurs in my study were raised in families who aspired to achieve lower to upper middle-class lifestyles, typically they were given or could negotiate a window of opportunity, usually after graduating university, during which their family allowed them to experiment and invest most of their resources in establishing a middle-class career and marriage. For some entrepreneurs, this window of opportunity was relatively large. For instance, children who were born second or later to parents who had obtained upper middle-class lifestyles working in senior government or corporate roles could have up to three to five years to invest most of their resources in building a middle-class lifestyle, potentially through the profits generated through their start-up. For first-born sons the window was typically much smaller, as their parents expected them to be able to contribute to providing their siblings with opportunities to achieve middle-class status immediately or up to one or two years after graduating. Serial entrepreneurship thus did not clash with Akan middle-class family values. It was only when parents or siblings tried to close the entrepreneurs’ window of opportunity to unsuccessfully experiment with running a start-up, out of care and concern for their family member’s inability to reach middle-class adult milestones, help their siblings achieve their aspirations and contribute to the family’s good name, that the promise of serial entrepreneurship could lead to serious friction between family members.
One day in December 2014, I had a conversation with an entrepreneur Kwabena Osei,[1] who told me that he was on his way to shut down his start-up. He shared that this outcome did not only mean that he had not met the expectations of his VC investor, but also that he had been ‘unable to return investment’ to his family. He explained that as the first-born son to parents who saved up money so that he could be the first in their family to go to university, they had expected him to ‘return their investment’ after graduating from university, in the form of securing a job and using some of his salary to fund his younger siblings’ secondary and university education. However, inspired by the promise of serial entrepreneurship, he had invested all his time and money in his start-up, neglecting his obligations to kin. Now that he needed his family’s support to navigate these crises and find a job, they had ceased all contact with him in shame and disappointment. He felt he could no longer rely on their care. Several entrepreneurs who had experienced their parents or siblings closing their window of opportunity in similar ways coped by hanging on to the promise of serial entrepreneurship. They moved away from their siblings, either within Ghana or abroad, to start yet another new start-up hoping this time they would be successful.
Missed marriage chances
To continue collective obligations of care and mark the family’s middle-class status, young Akan entrepreneurs were expected to enter into middle-class Christian marriage and to produce children. Entrepreneurs’ downward mobility could manifest in the form of a limited ability to achieve this goal. For instance, in 2018 various male entrepreneurs who had experienced start-up failure shared that their experience had gone hand-in-hand with their long-term, similarly aged girlfriends breaking up with them. According to them, women their age (in their early thirties) were ‘too demanding’: [t]hey wanted to get married and have children, while they had not accumulated enough resources to pay bride price to the bride’s family. Instead, many male entrepreneurs who coped with (repeated) start-up failure opted to date women much younger than them, usually recent university graduates, as they perceived these women as not wanting to get married yet and thus more compatible. I analyse this as a sign of downward mobility; by opting for this kind of relationship, male entrepreneurs delayed contributing to their family’s collective efforts to reproduce middle-class status through marriage and ensure the provision of care and opportunity by children.
The long-term ripple effects of start-up failure
During a conference I attended in 2024, one academic wondered whether the digital entrepreneurs did not permanently become downwardly mobile, as she imagined they had the skills to eventually ‘bounce back’ into middle-class lifestyles. The answer to this question is yes and no. Most entrepreneurs who experienced periods of (repeated) start-up failure and fractured sibling relationships eventually managed to generate income through waged work at a corporation or start-up, and to repair their relationships with family members. However, some effects of start-up failure rippled through these entrepreneurs and their kin’s life for much longer, for instance in the form of an inability to ‘catch up’ on saving for middle-class markers of adult family life. As they approached their late thirties, these entrepreneurs had no children, remained unmarried and could not achieve other material markers of middle-class status, such as buying a home or owning a new car. Some entrepreneurs also ended up developing start-up stress-induced chronic illnesses or came to feel so removed from their family, friends and start-up dreams that they committed suicide.
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Now what? From ‘bubble’ to a just digital future for Africa
For Ghanaian entrepreneurs, speaking about the full impact of (repeated) start-up failure can be incredibly hard. In hubs and incubators, framing failure according to the narrative mould provided by serial entrepreneurship is the accepted norm. By framing failure as lessons for the individual to overcome, the start-up community can maintain the idea that success will eventually come their way. Typically, entrepreneurs are worried that openly speaking about the true impact of start-up failure on them and their kin will lead to disapproval from the start-up community. They worry it might be perceived as discouraging new students from signing up for entrepreneur training programmes, or lead to the ‘start-up bubble’ bursting, in the form of funding for entrepreneur training programmes and capital provided to Ghanaian start-ups by foreign businesses and governments drying up. They also fear that openly speaking about their failures might bring (more) shame to themselves and their kin or feed into racial stereotypes about Ghana and Africa as ‘lacking’. These concerns illustrate a crises of solidarity: out of compassion for colleagues, kin and the nation, these entrepreneurs stick to individualized narratives that make them responsible for solving issues caused by others, such as Africa’s ‘missing jobs’ problem, and are reluctant to unite to put the structural problems that affect their entrepreneurial work and health on the agenda. One small step towards alleviating the mental health crises among young African entrepreneurs would be the fostering of more supportive practices and narratives about entrepreneurial responsibility and well-being.
Foot Notes
[1] This name is a pseudonym.
Tessa Pijnaker is a lecturer at the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Utrecht University. She completed her PhD in African Studies and Anthropology at the University of Birmingham. Her research examines middle class and elite formation, the politics of digital development and capitalism from the 19th century to the present. She is working on a book on techno-politics and class formation among digital entrepreneurs in Accra, Ghana.
Read the original of this report, including embedded links and illustrations, on the African Arguments site.
AllAfrica publishes around 500 reports a day from more than 110 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct.
Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. To address comments or complaints, please Contact us.
AllAfrica is a voice of, by and about Africa – aggregating, producing and distributing 500 news and information items daily from over 110 African news organizations and our own reporters to an African and global public. We operate from Cape Town, Dakar, Abuja, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Washington DC.
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