Africa's AI future at stake: continent must lead its own tech development

AFRICA MUST SHAPE ITS OWN AI FUTURE, CONFERENCE HEARS

For the 1.4 billion people across Africa’s 54 nations, the question of who builds artificial intelligence systems, whose data trains them, and whose languages they understand is not abstract. It is a question about access to justice, cultural survival, and who gets to define the continent’s future. That was the central message from the second day of the University of Johannesburg’s inaugural AI and the Law Conference, where delegates confronted the real-world consequences of AI development that leaves African communities out of the picture.

The conference brought together leading voices from academia, law, technology and industry for a full day of rigorous engagement. Through keynote addresses, interdisciplinary panel discussions and parallel sessions, scholars, researchers and practitioners exchanged perspectives on the rapidly evolving relationship between AI, law, governance and sustainable development. Technology Innovation Agency Chief Executive Officer Dr Titus Mathe delivered an industry address, bringing an innovation perspective to the proceedings.

United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Rector of the United Nations University, Professor Tshilidzi Marwala, opened his address with questions that cut to the heart of public accountability in the age of AI. “When something goes wrong, or even when something goes right, who decides? Who is liable? Who designed the system that made the decision possible? And what trade-offs did we quietly accept along the way without really naming them?” he asked.

Marwala argued that society must approach artificial intelligence through three interconnected lenses: law, governance and balance. Law determines who is liable and how rights are protected. Governance determines how systems of oversight, data, algorithms and computing infrastructure are designed. Balance requires society to confront the unavoidable trade-offs between technological advancement and its risks. “For every domain AI touches, society must decide how much certainty the law demands, how much structure governance provides and how much trade-off we are willing to accept,” he said.

The implications for ordinary people seeking justice are particularly acute. AI-powered legal assistance and document automation could significantly expand access to legal services, particularly for communities that have historically struggled to reach the justice system. Marwala cautioned, though, that these benefits would only be realised if people could access and trust these technologies and if meaningful regulatory safeguards were in place. “If we let the companies write the rules for the very tools meant to close the justice gaps, we risk the same digital divide simply reappearing inside the solution,” he warned.

Concerns about AI in criminal justice are equally pressing. Predictive policing and risk-scoring systems can influence decisions on bail, sentencing and parole, directly affecting citizens’ rights and liberty. Given that AI systems are fundamentally based on statistical models, Marwala questioned whether probabilistic technologies should be relied upon in legal matters that demand proof beyond reasonable doubt. He also stressed that AI systems can produce responses that appear convincing while being factually incorrect, making it essential for lawyers and policymakers to understand the technical limitations of the technologies they seek to regulate. “Accuracy is not truth,” he said. “The same way we have long understood that correlation is not causation, we must recognise that accuracy is not truth.”

UJ Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Letlhokwa George Mpedi brought the conversation firmly into the African context, warning that the continent cannot simply import AI governance frameworks developed elsewhere and expect them to respond adequately to Africa’s distinctive social, cultural and economic realities. “AI models are mirrors. They reflect whatever they were fed. And if the data feeding those mirrors is overwhelmingly Western, then Africa is letting someone else’s mirror define its own reflection,” Mpedi said.

He highlighted the risk of African cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge being reproduced by AI systems without recognition, attribution or compensation. Traditional African fabrics, patterns and other forms of cultural expression could be replicated and commercialised thousands of kilometres from the communities that created them. Drawing on South Africa’s protection of Rooibos through geographical indication, Mpedi argued that Africa should explore similar legal mechanisms to safeguard the provenance of its cultural heritage. “Africa needs the AI equivalent of geographical indication, a legal mechanism that protects cultural provenance before it is absorbed and monetised elsewhere,” he said.

Meanwhile, language presents a challenge with direct consequences for public access to services. Africa is home to approximately 2,000 languages, yet leading AI systems perform reliably in only a small fraction of them. This has serious implications for access to justice and raises hard questions about whether AI systems can genuinely serve communities whose languages, legal traditions and approaches to dispute resolution they do not adequately understand. “An AI-driven legal aid tool is not neutral if it cannot reason competently in isiZulu or Sesotho,” Mpedi said. Algorithmic bias, he argued, must be understood as more than discriminatory outputs. It also raises fundamental questions about whose languages, legal reasoning, cultural knowledge and social realities are represented in the data used to develop AI systems.

Africa is not without negotiating power. Through the African Union and the African Continental Free Trade Area, the continent represents 54 countries and approximately 1.4 billion people, giving it significant collective leverage in shaping how African data is used to train AI systems. “We should talk together. We represent 1.4 billion people. If we harness it, it will be strong,” Mpedi said.

The two keynote addresses converged on a shared message: law, governance and technological innovation cannot operate in isolation, and none of the three is sufficient on its own. “Law alone arrives too late. It adjudicates harm only after the fact. Governance alone lacks teeth. It can design excellent systems that no one is actually bound to follow. And balance alone is just honesty about trade-offs, with no mechanisms to enforce the choices we have made,” Marwala said. “Put together, balance names the trade-offs, governance designs and manages them, and law enforces the outcome.”

Beyond the keynote addresses, day two featured a panel discussion under the theme Artificial Intelligence, Sustainability and the Future of Society: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. Chaired by UJ Faculty of Law Acting Vice-Dean for Teaching and Learning Professor Sebo Tladi, the discussion brought together Professor Georg Borges of Universität des Saarlandes in Germany, Professor Arthur Mutambara of UJ’s Institute for the Future of Knowledge, and Professor Sune von Solms of the UJ Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment. Parallel sessions gave scholars, researchers and legal practitioners a platform to present research and engage critically with the opportunities and challenges emerging at the intersection of artificial intelligence, law and sustainable development.

Speaking in the Kruger National Park, which marks a century of protection in 2026, Mpedi drew a parallel between conservation and the responsibility facing the current generation as it builds legal and governance frameworks for AI. “We are gathered in a place that protects something precious because generations before us had the foresight to build the legal instruments to make that protection durable. I hope this conference is one more such instrument,” he said. Whether African nations can move quickly enough to build those instruments before the rules are written elsewhere remains the open question hanging over the work ahead.