Page 77 - The Annual AI Governance Report 2025 Steering the Future of AI

The Annual AI Governance Report 2025: Steering the Future of AI

(continued)

Figure 16: (from top left to right) Speaking at the luncheon: H�E� Mr Alar Karis, H�E�
Mr Alar Karis, President, Republic of Estonia; Amandeep Singh Gill, Under-Secretary-
General and Special Envoy for Digital and Emerging Technologies, Office for Digital
and Emerging Technologies, United Nations; H�E� Ms� Rahayu Mahzam, Minister
of State, Ministry of Digital Development and Information, and Minister of State
at the Ministry of Health, Singapore; Robert Trager, Co-director, Oxford Martin AI
Governance Institute, University of Oxford

3.2 Africa

African participants stressed that inclusion is not optional but existential. The continent risks being
sidelined in global AI development due to limited compute infrastructure, talent concentration
elsewhere, and linguistic underrepresentation. Yet African voices at the Dialogue rejected the
notion of passive dependency. Instead, they emphasized sovereignty and self-determination,
calling for homegrown solutions and regional collaboration.

Africa has an opportunity to reposition itself, given its projected population growth, which
represents a significant source of data for big tech. To capitalize on this, African nations must
establish robust data frameworks to attract partnerships with major technology companies.
Africa is not concerned with the origin of the technology, but rather its ability to improve the
lives of its people. This requires collaboration between big tech, platforms like the ITU and
UN, and African governments to ensure equity in AI development and deployment. African
countries need to prioritize information technology budgets and investments in compute
infrastructure (like GPUs) within Africa. Africa does have proven track record of innovation,
particularly in financial technology and inclusion. The establishment of AI compute infrastructure
in Africa can help the continent leapfrog the digital divide.

One of the pressing issues raised was the linguistic divide. With more than 2,000 languages
spoken across the continent, the dominance of English and other global languages in large
models threatens to marginalize African cultures. Africa’s development of sovereign large

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