Africa’s Place In Global AI Governance

Africa must stop importing its technology and instead co-own and co-design it, Ambassador Professor Muhammadou M.O. Kah told the African AI Governance Summit, held on the sidelines of the 81st session of the United Nations General Assembly.

Ambassador Kah, who is The Gambia’s Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Switzerland and Permanent Representative to the United Nations Office at Geneva, the World Trade Organization and other international organisations, delivered the keynote at a session convened by Lawyers Hub delivered the keynote on 22 September. The summit was held in New York with virtual participation.

It follows the inaugural summit Lawyers Hub convened in Geneva in July, which the governments of The Gambia and Kenya, and their permanent missions in Geneva, supported. Ambassador Kah located the continent’s leverage in two assets: the minerals that power the global digital transition, and more than 2,000 languages capable of supporting inclusive and representative artificial intelligence systems. “For Africa, this time we must not import,” he said. “We must co-own, co-design, and own our own data.”

Five markers

Ambassador Kah set out five markers for collective strategy.

• Negotiate as one. Scale rather than fragmentation must define the continent’s bargaining position.
• Build and finance its own rails. African states must govern their data and invest in their own digital public infrastructure.
• Its own rules. Africa must be a co-author of global AI governance frameworks rather than a recipient of them.
• Centre its innovations. Rules must be written with entrepreneurs, not only for them.
• Mobilise. “A seat is not a voice, and a voice is not a pen,” he said, calling for a move from presence to influence.

The frameworks now being written. Kah’s call to write the rules lands while those rules are taking shape. The first Global Dialogue on AI Governance met in Geneva on 6 and 7 July, where the UN’s Independent International Scientific Panel on Artificial Intelligence, created by the General Assembly in August 2025, presented its first report.

Africa already has a seat in that process. Linda Bonyo, founder and chief executive of Lawyers Hub, co-chaired the Dialogue’s breakout cluster on human rights alongside Spain’s minister for digital transformation and the civil service. At home, the African Union adopted a Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy in 2024, and national strategies have followed in several member states, including Kenya’s National AI Strategy 2025–2030.  She said multilateralism remains the continent’s main force multiplier. “Africa is not a bystander, she is a stakeholder,” she said. “But alignment is a choice, never assume it.”