What questions should Africa bring to the global AI governance table? We asked our Just AI Fellows to identify the pressing questions they believe should shape discussions at the Global AI Governance Dialogue in Geneva. Drawing on expertise across law, governance, digital rights and human rights, their questions spotlight the complex realities of AI in African contexts and help push the global conversation toward more just, inclusive and accountable governance.
Elisabeth Achancho
How can AI governance frameworks incorporate African linguistic diversity, informal economies, and data sovereignty concerns while mitigating extractive data practices and unequal compute access, and what just AI principles ensure equitable value distribution, accountability, and culturally grounded human rights protections?
Emmanuel Kpakpo Brown
Interoperability efforts standardise technical protocols across AI systems, but rarely evidentiary ones. Should forensic readiness – the built-in capacity to generate auditable and contestable evidence- become a baseline interoperability requirement for AI systems used in cross-border contract enforcement and justice delivery?
Simbarashe Kaneunyenye
When open-source AI models embed Global North assumptions about risk and criminality, how should UN mechanisms ensure that “open” does not mean decontextualised, and there are adaptations for use in policing and immigration that reflect local African realities?
Shirley Genga
How can African states exercise AI sovereignty when AI systems developed outside the continent are being adopted by governments to determine the rights, opportunities, and access to critical sectors like employment, and public services, including healthcare, policing, and social protection?
The Just AI Fellows also authored this conference brief, The foundations of justice-centred AI governance: Recommendations for Southern African Member States, which draws on insights from the 2026 Just AI Conference and their own AI governance research to share targeted priorities for the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
