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 attempting to manage the know-how.
“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 ought to be proactive in creating laws, Okolo says. She suggests African nations reform present legal guidelines akin to insurance policies on knowledge privateness and digital governance to deal with AI.
However Gitau is anxious {that a} hasty strategy to regulating AI might hinder adoption of the know-how. And he or she says it’s essential to construct homegrown AI with functions tailor-made for Africans to harness the facility of AI to enhance financial progress.
“Earlier than we put laws [in place], we have to do the exhausting work of understanding the complete spectrum of the know-how and spend money on constructing the African AI ecosystem,” she says.
Greater than 50 nations and the EU have AI methods in place, and greater than 700 AI coverage initiatives have been carried out since 2017, in line with the Organisation for Financial Co-operation and Growth’s AI Coverage Observatory. However solely 5 of these initiatives are from Africa and not one of the OECD’s 38 member nations 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 skilled at ECDPM, an independent-policy assume tank in Brussels.
“We should contribute our views and personal our regulatory frameworks,” says Musoni. “We wish to be normal makers, not normal takers.”
