African Leaders Must Seize Control of AI Regulation, Academics Warn

Africa’s AI governance deficit took center stage at the University of Johannesburg’s inaugural AI and the Law Conference, where senior academics and policymakers spent the second day confronting a question that cuts to the heart of the continent’s technological future: who decides how artificial intelligence systems are designed, deployed and governed in Africa?

That question structured the day’s proceedings, anchored by keynote addresses from United Nations Under-Secretary-General and Rector of the United Nations University Professor Tshilidzi Marwala and UJ Vice-Chancellor and Principal Professor Letlhokwa George Mpedi. Both speakers delivered the same blunt warning: Africa cannot afford to passively consume AI systems and regulatory frameworks developed elsewhere if it hopes to protect its people, languages, cultures and economic interests.

Prof Marwala opened by naming the accountability questions that underpin nearly every conversation about artificial intelligence. “When something goes wrong, or even when something goes right, who decides? Who is liable? Who designed the system that made the decision possible? And what trade-offs did we quietly accept along the way without really naming them?” he asked.

The framework he proposed rests on three interconnected dimensions: law, governance and balance. Law determines who bears responsibility and how rights are protected. Governance determines how systems of oversight, data, algorithms and computing infrastructure are structured. Balance requires society to confront unavoidable trade-offs between technological advancement and its risks. “For every domain AI touches, society must decide how much certainty the law demands, how much structure governance provides and how much trade-off we are willing to accept,” Prof Marwala said.

His concerns ranged across sectors where AI is already reshaping institutional practice. In criminal justice, he cautioned against relying on predictive policing and risk-scoring systems to inform decisions on bail, sentencing and parole. These systems rest on statistical models, yet the law demands proof beyond reasonable doubt. That tension between probabilistic reasoning and legal certainty represents a governance challenge policymakers have yet to adequately address.

In the justice system more broadly, AI-powered legal assistance and document automation could expand access to legal services for communities historically excluded from formal legal institutions. The benefits, Prof Marwala warned, would materialize only if regulatory safeguards were established before deployment. “If we let the companies write the rules for the very tools meant to close the justice gaps, we risk the same digital divide simply reappearing inside the solution,” he said.

He also stressed that AI systems can produce responses that appear convincing while being factually incorrect, a technical limitation that lawyers and policymakers must understand before attempting to regulate these technologies. “Accuracy is not truth,” he said, drawing a parallel to the distinction between correlation and causation.

Prof Mpedi sharpened the analysis on the African context. The continent cannot simply transplant AI governance frameworks designed for other jurisdictions and expect them to address Africa’s distinctive social, cultural and economic realities. He used a direct metaphor to make the point: “AI models are mirrors. They reflect whatever they were fed. And if the data feeding those mirrors is overwhelmingly Western, then Africa is letting someone else’s mirror define its own reflection.”

The risk extends to cultural heritage and indigenous knowledge. African cultural expression, from traditional fabrics to artistic patterns, could be replicated and commercialized by AI systems thousands of kilometres away from the communities that created them, with no recognition, attribution or compensation. Prof Mpedi drew on South Africa’s protection of Rooibos through geographical indication as a potential model. “Africa needs the AI equivalent of geographical indication, a legal mechanism that protects cultural provenance before it is absorbed and monetised elsewhere,” he said.

Meanwhile, Africa possesses negotiating power that has not been fully mobilized. Through the African Union and the African Continental Free Trade Area, the continent represents 54 countries and approximately 1.4 billion people, giving it significant collective leverage in shaping how African data is used to train AI systems. “We should talk together. We represent 1.4 billion people. If we harness it, it will be strong,” Prof Mpedi said.

Language presents another critical governance challenge. Africa is home to approximately 2,000 languages, yet leading AI systems perform reliably in only a small fraction of them. This gap has direct implications for access to justice and raises fundamental questions about whether AI systems can adequately serve communities whose languages, legal traditions and approaches to dispute resolution they do not understand. “An AI-driven legal aid tool is not neutral if it cannot reason competently in isiZulu or Sesotho,” Prof Mpedi said.

The two keynote addresses converged on a shared institutional conclusion. Law, governance and technological innovation cannot operate in isolation. Prof Marwala stated the relationship plainly: “Law alone arrives too late. It adjudicates harm only after the fact. Governance alone lacks teeth. It can design excellent systems that no one is actually bound to follow. And balance alone is just honesty about trade-offs, with no mechanisms to enforce the choices we have made. Put together, balance names the trade-offs, governance designs and manages them, and law enforces the outcome.”

The day’s programming extended beyond the keynotes to include parallel sessions where scholars, researchers and legal practitioners presented research at the intersection of artificial intelligence, law and sustainable development. A panel on Artificial Intelligence, Sustainability and the Future of Society brought together Professor Georg Borges of Universität des Saarlandes in Germany, Professor Arthur Mutambara of UJ’s Institute for the Future of Knowledge, and Professor Sune von Solms of the UJ Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, chaired by UJ Faculty of Law Acting Vice-Dean for Teaching and Learning Professor Sebo Tladi. Technology Innovation Agency Chief Executive Officer Dr Titus Mathe delivered an industry address, adding an innovation perspective to the proceedings.

The conference was held in the Kruger National Park, which marks a century of formal protection in 2026. Prof Mpedi drew on that setting to close his address with a challenge to the assembled policymakers and legal scholars: “We are gathered in a place that protects something precious because generations before us had the foresight to build the legal instruments to make that protection durable. I hope this conference is one more such instrument.” Whether the legal and governance frameworks that emerge from gatherings like this one will prove durable enough to shape AI development on African terms remains the open question the continent now faces.