Toward an African Agenda for AI Safety

TL;DR

This paper highlights Africa's unique AI risks and advocates for a tailored regional safety agenda, including policy, infrastructure, and literacy initiatives to ensure inclusive AI governance.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive African-specific AI safety framework and proposes concrete actions to integrate African perspectives into global AI safety governance.

Findings

Africa faces unique AI risks like electoral interference and data colonialism.

Current African AI safety efforts are limited and lack dedicated institutions.

Proposed actions include establishing an African AI Safety Institute and regional forums.

Abstract

This paper maps Africa's distinctive AI risk profile, from deepfake fuelled electoral interference and data colonial dependency to compute scarcity, labour disruption and disproportionate exposure to climate driven environmental costs. While major benefits are promised to accrue, the availability, development and adoption of AI also mean that African people and countries face particular AI safety risks, from large scale labour market disruptions to the nefarious use of AI to manipulate public opinion. To date, African perspectives have not been meaningfully integrated into global debates and processes regarding AI safety, leaving African stakeholders with limited influence over the emerging global AI safety governance agenda. While there are Computer Incident Response Teams on the continent, none hosts a dedicated AI Safety Institute or office. We propose a five-point action plan centred on (i) a policy approach that foregrounds the protection of the human rights of those most vulnerable to experiencing the harmful socio-economic effects of AI; (ii) the establishment of an African AI Safety Institute; (iii) promote public AI literacy and awareness; (iv) development of early warning system with inclusive benchmark suites for 25+ African languages; and (v) an annual AU-level AI Safety & Security Forum.