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AI Governance in Africa · The FIT4Privacy Podcast | Exploring ISO Standards AI Privacy | Grow Skills Store

• 0:00
  Do these days see a lot of AI talk and AI coming up?
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  Is this bringing a change in the mindset?
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  Is this bringing a change in the landscape of legislations?
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  How is it happening? How?
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  What are the changes you're seeing?
• 0:16
  Absolutely. When it comes to AI governance,
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  there's been like, you know, an interesting amount of activities
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  on the continent. So primarily you look at, I
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  mean, understand 2 of countries now have like specific AI
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  strategies, no less than three have like national AI policies,
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  the same countries introducing things like AI charters
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  policies, plan frameworks, so many also on the pipeline.
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  But beyond that, we're also seeing countries take the hard
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  law approach. So think Angola, Morocco, Egypt,
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  Nigeria, these countries at different points have different
• 0:52
  iterations of AI specific laws. And if you also look at a
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  country like Ghana, for example, instead of AI specific law, what
• 1:00
  he has, it's what you call like an imagine technologies bill,
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  which is imagining imagining technologies more broadly rather
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  than zeroing in on AI. And I think it's also like an
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  interesting approach because what a country is basically
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  doing is, you know what, it could be AI today in the next 10
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  years, for example, it's probably constant computing.
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  So rather than coming back here to start going through the racks
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  of trying to introduce another technology specific law, how
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  come we don't just look at the emerging technologies more
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  broadly and then just try to set the principles, set the
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  governance framework, which is very close to like a digital
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  clearing house model in place before the regulation.
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  So we've seen a lot of proposed initiatives to have like an AI
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  or an emerging technology specific legislation in
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  different African countries. And more countries have also
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  announced plans like Kenya, Zimbabwe, Uganda, quite a number
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  of countries are also announcing plans to sort of deal with AI in
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  their own different ways to announce, I'm sorry to, to, to
• 2:00
  introduce AI laws. But beyond that, you're seeing,
• 2:04
  you know, efforts to amend existing laws, which means
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  basically in some markets and in some of these countries where
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  you also have like proposed laws, they're basically not
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  waiting for any specific laws. So you're looking at amending
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  specific law. So Angola is an interesting
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  example where the data protection law, for example, is
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  being amended and includes specific provisions on AI, like
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  what are prohibited AI activities that you can do, What
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  are the safeguards, data protection safeguards that you
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  need to bake into AI considerations.
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  So the proposed amendment includes all of those things,
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  but another interesting thing we're also seeing away from, you
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  know, trying to go through the hard law is also how existing
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  authorities are also doing things around addressing
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  different things around AI, whether it's the risk or whether
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  it's just issuing warning and safeguard.
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  So if you look at sector specific regulators like capital
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  market authorities in Nigeria, Mauritius, they have a robo
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  advisory guidelines and regulation which is meant to
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  specifically deal with instances of companies using the robo
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  advisors. And then you have data
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  protection authorities who are pretty much playing the role of
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  what you call like a de facto regulator in that domain as
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  well. We've seen moratoriums imposed.
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  We've seen, we've seen a moratorium imposed in Morocco,
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  for example against Fisher recognition technology.
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  We've seen Senegal deny use of Fisher recognition in workplace.
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  You've seen that Kenya suspend a company using yeah, that's,
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  that's an AI company, you know, using iris of people biometrics.
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  You've seen some DPS issue advisories, published
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  guidelines, you've seen them doing public consultation
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  obviously in Senegal and Cote d'Ivoire.
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  So data protection authorities are playing different role and
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  the same thing, you know, competition authorities, Product
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  Safety regulators in Tanzania, Kenya, Human Rights Commission
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  in Nigeria, for example, talking about introducing the guidelines
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  and also setting up a desk office to do with the area.
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  So just to cap cap it up, a lot of things are actually happening
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  was just been shipped in different ways due to national
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  priorities and also different countries are taking different
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  approach. But definitely we're seeing, you
• 4:22
  know, specific EI regulation coming up or legislation
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  proposed EI legislation coming up.
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  In addition to that authorities, domain regulators, sector
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  speculators are doing, you know, different things at different on
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  different level. 1, of course, there are also like continental
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  initiatives like the African Continental Free Trade
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  Agreement, Digital Trade Protocol that also has now like
• 4:46
  an emerging technologies and extra which will also be
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  enforced alongside which also be key components about the digital
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  trade protocol will be enforced. So yeah, a whole lot is actually
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  happening on the continent as far as the governance is
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  concerned. To catch the full discussion,
• 4:59
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• 5:05
  Thanks for listening.