Mauritius set out its national AI strategy in 2018, the first by an African country. Since then over a dozen African states have adopted national AI policies. As a national policy plan, an AI strategy typically sets out the priorities and aspirations in achieving certain policy objectives. At the continental level, the African Union has also adopted an AI strategy.
Kenya and Ethiopia have tabled draft AI laws that set out how the countries want AI governed. Morocco, Egypt and Nigeria are already mulling the idea of AI legislation. The trend shows that policymakers are slowly turning their attention from unchecked enthusiasm about AI to reckoning with governing AI risks.
As technology law and policy scholars, our research explores the dynamics of and approaches to the governance of emerging technologies like AI. Our recent work explores the origins, nature and scope of AI governance initiatives in #Africa. We found a number of common threads, notably the trend for African states to adopt the European Union's approach to AI regulation. But this needs to be called into question.
No doubt, Africa needs AI legislation. It will be vital to regulate the development and use of AI systems that pose risks to individual rights, social cohesion or even national security. Legislation can also create new regulatory bodies that oversee AI rules. Kenya’s AI Bill, for instance, institutes the AI Commissioner as well as the AI Advisory Committee as regulators of AI systems in the country.
But the effort to turn AI policies into legislation requires reckoning for two reasons. One concern is whether the continent really needs a new layer of digital laws while preceding pieces of tech legislation remain largely unenforced. Many African countries have enacted data protection legislation but are yet to install oversight bodies, or those established lack the resources to enforce laws. Legislating for AI in this environment risks producing laws that will largely be aspirational but aren't implemented.
The second concern relates to the heavy reliance on European standards. Both Kenya’s and Ethiopia’s AI bills adopt the European Union’s risk-based approach. This involves regulating AI systems based on the nature of risk they pose, banning those with "unacceptable risks" altogether. Transplanting European standards into African local realities remains highly problematic.
[AgentUpdate Depth Analysis] The dilemma of AI regulation in Africa offers critical lessons for the global AI Agent ecosystem. AI Agents rely heavily on dynamic environments, diverse tool integration, and localized data to operate effectively. Imposing a rigid, European-style risk-based regulatory framework in emerging markets could severely stifle local Agent innovation by raising compliance costs for resource-constrained startups. For the Agent ecosystem to thrive in Africa, policymakers should champion 'regulatory sandboxes' rather than restrictive prohibitions. Facilitating lightweight, adaptive guidelines will allow local developers to build agents tailored for regional challenges—such as agricultural optimization or fintech—without being crushed under bureaucratic weight. The future of AI Agents depends on balancing safety with the freedom to execute agentic workflows in real-world environments.
