A new continental advisory council will examine how AI policies affect public participation, cultural representation and democratic processes in Africa. Its launch comes ahead of Kenya’s 2027 General Election.
The council has six members, drawn from journalism, AI governance, language technology, data infrastructure, open technology and financial technology. It will commission research, convene public discussions, issue policy advisories to governments and other councils, and recommend priorities for philanthropic investment.
The body will operate independently. Members will serve an initial two-year term and meet quarterly. The council will not regulate or run AI programmes. Instead, it will provide independent analysis and public scrutiny of the policies and investments shaping Africa’s AI landscape. It will also look at data ownership, accountability and public trust as AI spreads into financial services, public administration and other sectors.
Kenya’s electoral environment is one of its areas of concern. Young people aged 18 to 34 make up about 40% of registered voters. Trust Lab researchers identified 17 major coordinated disinformation campaigns in 2025. An Anthropic report on AI misuse documented the removal of an account that one actor used to mass-produce Kenyan political content. These findings have raised concern about AI being used to generate political content at scale and shape public discourse before the 2027 vote.
John-Allan Namu, journalist and founder of Africa Uncensored, said his job is to ask who holds power and who answers for it. He said those questions now apply to the algorithms that shape what voters see. “Newsrooms need to be asking them before 2027, not after,” he said.
The council’s formation comes as African governments develop national AI frameworks under the African Union’s Continental AI Strategy, adopted in July 2024. The strategy’s first implementation phase runs from 2025 to 2026, with a midterm review scheduled for 2027.
The continent still faces gaps in infrastructure, policy development and language representation. Data from the Africa Data Centres Association and the World Economic Forum show that Africa holds about 0.6% of global data centre capacity. The United States holds nearly 45%. Yet Africa is home to about 18% of the world’s population.
A 2025 study of major language models found that only 42 of Africa’s roughly 2,000 languages were supported. Consistent coverage was limited to Amharic, Swahili, Afrikaans and Malagasy.
Chido Dzinotyiwei, co-founder and CEO of Vambo AI, said this gap risks excluding communities from AI’s benefits. A model that can’t follow how people actually speak isn’t serving them, however advanced it is, she said. “That has to be a design decision from the start.”
Kofi Yeboah, a programme officer at the Mozilla Foundation, said African stakeholders must help set the standards that govern AI systems from the outset. “Africa has to help write those norms,” he said.
The other members are:
- Maha Jouini, founder of Chifaa
- Charlette N’Guessan, a data solutions and AI ecosystem specialist at Amini and founder of Afrokwary
- Obinna Okerekeocha, founder of the Naija AI Film Festival
