Mozambique has introduced a draft National Artificial Intelligence Strategy as part of its broader digital transformation initiative, opening the document for public consultation from May 4 to June 4.
The strategy was unveiled by Lourino Chemane, chairman of the National Institute of Information and Communication Technologies, during the International Telecommunication Union’s AI for Good workshop held in Kenya. In his presentation, Chemane outlined the country’s key focus areas for AI advancement and emphasized the potential for regional collaboration with other participating nations.
He said AI regulatory sandboxes would play a significant role in shaping public policy, informing national AI strategies and ensuring the safe implementation of AI across sectors including education, healthcare, finance, energy, agriculture, climate change and digital public services.
Mozambique used the ITU platform to showcase recent progress in establishing a legal and regulatory framework for digital transformation, including the enactment of a Cybersecurity Law and a Cybercrime Law, as well as regulations governing data centres and cloud computing platforms.
Chemane highlighted Mozambique’s ambition to become a regional hub for data centres and cloud computing infrastructure, citing the country’s electricity generation capacity, abundant water resources, a long coastline conducive to submarine fibre-optic cable deployment and a young workforce as key competitive advantages. The National Institute of Information and Communication Technologies encouraged private sector entities to view Mozambique as a prime investment destination, asserting that the country’s legal and regulatory framework is designed to attract private investment in the sector.
Mozambique joins a growing number of Southern African Development Community nations establishing national AI frameworks. Lesotho and Malawi are among those developing similar frameworks, while South Africa is revising its own draft AI policy after withdrawing it from public consultation following the discovery of AI-generated citation errors in the document.
