Toward an African Agenda for AI Safety

Artificial intelligence is reshaping economies, politics, and societies worldwide, and Africa is no exception. While AI promises benefits for health, education, agriculture, and economic growth, this report highlights how its risks are especially acute on the continent given fragile institutions, limited infrastructure, and geopolitical dependencies.

Key risks identified include:

• Malicious use: deepfakes and AI-powered disinformation threaten elections and social cohesion; AI-enabled surveillance raises concerns for human rights; cybercrime and online gender-based violence are growing.
• Malfunction: reliability issues from models trained on Western data, bias in AI tools, and risks to critical sectors like healthcare and education.
• Systemic risks: labour disruptions in sectors such as business process outsourcing, worsening environmental pressures from compute and data centres, and escalating e-waste.
  

Despite the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy, national-level efforts remain fragmented. Only a handful of states (Kenya, Ghana, Morocco, Rwanda, South Africa) show meaningful activity on AI safety, and no African country currently hosts a dedicated AI Safety Institute.

The paper advances a five-pillar action plan to build a robust African AI safety ecosystem:

1. Grounding AI governance in human rights to protect the most vulnerable.
2. Establishing an African AI Safety Institute to lead research, testing, and policy innovation.
3. Expanding public AI literacy through education and targeted campaigns.
4. Building early warning systems with multilingual benchmarks for at least 25 African languages.
5. Convening an annual AU-level AI Safety & Security Forum to align policy, coordinate responses, and amplify Africa’s voice in global governance.
   

By embedding African perspectives into global AI safety frameworks, the agenda seeks to safeguard communities, assert technological sovereignty, and shape a fairer, more resilient AI future.

This paper will be launched during a webinar hosted on the 9th of September, 2025.

What to expect:

This webinar will serve as an official introduction to the paper with the objectives to;

• Map Africa's specific AI risk profile to provide a clear understanding of the unique threats the continent faces, highlighting key threats to our economies, societies, and ecosystems.
• Propose and explore a strategic five-point action plan to build a continent-wide approach to AI safety.
• Discuss and demonstrate how establishing an African AI Safety Institute and promoting public literacy can secure the continent's sovereignty, ensure its participation in global AI governance.

Webinar details:
Date: Tuesday 9th September, 2025
Time: 3:00-4:00 PM SAST
Register: https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/-Ly4jnwpQXu9rw4LFRepYw#/registration