The global conversation on AI regulation is moving quickly, but not along a single track and not under the control of any one bloc. What is emerging is a polycentric governance landscape in which different regions are experimenting with different combinations of law, policy, standards, institutional design and sectoral oversight. The European Union has moved furthest with a comprehensive cross-sector legal instrument in the AI Act. The United States has advanced through a national action plan as well.
These developments show movement, but not closure. More importantly, these approaches are becoming reference points that other regions will either align with or respond to. They indicate that AI governance is being built in real time, across multiple centres of influence, rather than dictated by any single region. AI governance is not a future discussion as it is now being shaped across multiple centres of power. The question is not whether Africa will participate, but whether it will shape the rules or adapt to them after they are set.
The question for Africa is whether the continent is organising itself strongly enough to shape a governance architecture that remains open, contested and unfinished. Africa is participating in the conversation. The African Union endorsed the Continental Artificial Intelligence Strategy in July 2024, explicitly setting out an Africa-centric, development-focused and inclusive approach to AI governance. Nationally, Kenya, South Africa, Rwanda, Egypt and Nigeria have advanced national AI strategies and strengthened coordinating roles in national AI development. These are meaningful signs of engagement and institution-building. Africa is therefore not absent from AI governance. The deeper constraint is fragmentation with multiple national efforts without sufficient coordination to shape a unified continental position.
Africa does face real readiness constraints, but so does much of the world outside the most advanced economies. The IMF’s AI Preparedness Index places advanced economies at 0.68, emerging market economies at 0.46, low-income countries at 0.32, and sub-Saharan Africa at 0.34. That suggests Africa is not uniquely outside the picture; rather, many countries remain in early or intermediate stages of preparedness.
Certainly Africa needs to look for lessons. India is relevant because it is trying to combine inclusion, compute access, governance guidelines and an AI Safety Institute within a development context. Japan offers a model of trustworthy and adaptive governance. China shows how a state can regulate particular AI applications while also building domestic capability. Singapore demonstrates iterative, practice-oriented governance. Gulf strategies, particularly in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, show how AI can be tied explicitly to economic transformation. What emerges is not a single model, but a set of strategic choices available to Africa. These examples do not provide a single blueprint, but they do suggest that Africa can learn from a broad set of peers rather than only from Europe or the United States.
The question is: Where is Africa’s collective voice? A collective voice should not be understood as consensus, but as coordinated influence and the ability to shape agendas, contribute standards and engage global processes from a position of alignment rather than fragmentation. It should also not be framed as an appeal to join a debate that some others might feel they have already settled. It should be framed as a call to organise influence more strategically within a governance system that is still taking shape. Africa’s collective voice can be strengthened across three levels: Continental (African Union): Align strategy, standards and global representation; Regional (for example, Ecowas, SADC): Enable regulatory learning and cross-border coordination; and National: Focus on execution, skills, infrastructure, institutions and implementation.
That means using AU processes more deliberately, deepening regional regulatory learning, strengthening institutional capacity, and participating more assertively in multilateral digital forums, including processes linked to the Global Digital Compact. It also means contributing African priorities, such as equity, language diversity, developmental inclusion, public-interest deployment and institutional realism, to global AI discussions, not only reacting to external norms after the fact. The issue is therefore less about belated entry than about stronger coordination, clearer agenda-setting and more sustained participation.
If Africa does not organise its voice, the likely outcome is not exclusion, but passive alignment. Standards will be adopted rather than shaped and local priorities may be constrained by frameworks developed elsewhere. This would limit both policy autonomy and innovation potential. This creates a more balanced and credible policy position. The point is not to argue that Africa is standing outside AI governance while others decide everything. It is to recognise that AI governance is being shaped across multiple regions and institutional traditions, and that Africa’s opportunity lies in engaging this polycentric landscape with greater confidence, stronger coordination and broader learning. AI governance is still being written. Africa’s opportunity is not to catch up, but to shape what comes next through coordinated action, stronger institutions and a clear articulation of its own priorities.
