This research aims to establish an evidence base for an economic policy for artificial intelligence (AI) in an African context. It examines the potential impact of AI as the next general-purpose technology across various sectors, including employment, trade, inequality, competition, taxation, intellectual property, privacy, and liability.
The research questions focus on how AI can contribute to or detract from core economic and political issues and what policy interventions are necessary to ensure equitable outcomes. This project aims to provide inclusive and just policy recommendations that ensure AI access, use, and competence in Africa in support of state formation and social compact renewal in Africa’s post-pandemic economic recovery and resource mobilisation. Further, while AI in Africa is still nascent, we will start building an evidence base to design a series of critical policy actions that catalyse to enhance efforts for harmonised, just and inclusive AI economic outcomes for the continent. These will complement other policy research of the African Just AI Project that seeks to ensure that policy-making processes are participatory and enable collective decision-making where relevant and which account for and redress historical and structural inequalities that manifest in dominant AI systems.
